Semantic Features Of Evaluative It-clauses In The Research Articles By Chinese Writers

Academic writing is not only objective statement of fact,but also a type of evaluative social communication.Evaluation indicates speaker's or writer's attitude or stance towards the proposition followed,which also develops and adjusts interpersonal relations with readers.Evaluative it-clause is an effective measure to express evaluation of writers.Based on the two self-compiled corpora,collecting 500,000 words of research articles of materials science by Chinese writers and English native writers respectively,this study adopts the corpus-based research method to investigate the frequency distribution of different types of it-clauses by Chinese writers and have an analysis on the semantic features embedded in it.The research result shows that Chinese writers have a wider range of words including adjectives,passive verbs and nouns than native writers.In addition,native English writers prefer to use an explicit way to express their evaluation,while Chinese writers prefer to use an implicit expression of their attitude and proposition.Reasons that account for these differences are drawn and pedagogical implications are provided to improve academic writings.