A Study Of Teaching Business English Reading Based On Appraisal Theory

With the globalization and China’s reform and opening up,the international trades develop more frequently and closely,so that business English has drawn widely attention and interest,especially in China.However,it can not be denied that the business English reading abilities and levels of a large part of students are weak,and the reading enthusiasm is lack which is mainly because there still exist some problems in our business English teaching methods,the teaching outcome of reading is much less than satisfactory.Firstly,the traditional grammar-translating teaching method take up more than half of the reading course,which led to students’ excessively focus on words,grammar and sentence structures.As a result,students always tend to stuck in the acquisition of literal meaning,but they can not understand the article’s theme and the author’s intention in depth.Secondly,teachers tend to take reading teaching as one way to impart language knowledge,but ignore the cultivation of reading abilities and interest.Appraisal theory is proposed by J.R.Martin and P.R.R.White and developed within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics.It is a system of interpersonal meanings which deals with linguistic resources used to express,negotiate and naturalize inter-subjective positions with audience/readers.Appraisal theory is made up of three subsystems: Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.It is of great importance to attempt to make a tentative research of the Business English reading teaching from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.Studying appraisal resources in reading texts plays an important role in fostering students’ sensory acuity and discernment,so that they can better understand and reveal the author’s intention and text’s gist.This thesis attempts to apply Appraisal theory into teaching of Business English reading course,and teachers instruct students to consciously recognize and analyze the appraisal resources in reading texts,in order to cultivate their reading abilities and improve their overall reading levels.The author carried out the experimental teaching for 16 weeks in the first half of 2016 in Guangdong Baiyun College.In this experiment,80 students were selected as experimental subjects and they were randomly divided into two class,one as experimental class(EC)and the other as the control class(CC).Two different methods were respectively adopted in two classes during 16 weeks.The EC was treated under the guidance of Appraisal theory and the CC was treated in the traditional grammar-translating method.At last,SPSS(19.0)software was applied to the data statistics and calculation,and by comparing the pretest and posttest scores of two groups,this thesis got the result that applying Appraisal theory to the teaching of business English reading was helpful in improving the students’ reading interest and ability.The experimental subjects and teaching materials are limited in this study,so the feasibility of the experiment results are still to be verified based on more data and further researches are expected.