An Analysis Of Attitudinal Individuality In Chinese Primary School Students' Writing

Essay writing is the most comprehensive part in Chinese language education.It is one of the important means to examine students' outlooks on life,values and their views of the world.In recent years,as primary and secondary education has become a hot topic widely discussed in society,the questions of whether there are “true feelings and genuine emotions” in students' writing,what can be counted as “true feelings and genuine emotions”,and how to guide students to “write what is in their heart” are increasingly receiving widespread attention and controversy.Essay writing education in China begins in elementary schools.Therefore,the issue of “true feelings and genuine emotions” should be based on and start with the essay writing education in primary schools.Systematic Functional Linguistics(SFL)is a theory that focuses on the stratified interpretation of the real-world language phenomena,as well as an applicable linguistic theory featuring the systemic description and interpretation of the relationship between context,language users,and text.Therefore,this dissertation intends to adopt the perspective of SFL to discuss the questions concerning the “true feelings and genuine emotions” or the attitudinal resources in Chinese primary school students' writing which include the following:1.How to give a semantic definition to “true feelings and genuine emotions” in primary school students' writing?2.How to analyze the attitudinal resources and reasons for individuality in students' writing.3.Whether “fake emotions and feelings” really exist in primary school students' writing? And whether students' attitudes are convergent and lacking individuality?This dissertation firstly deals with the semantic category of “true feelings and genuine emotions” in primary school students' writing.Then an SFL-based analytic model for the “true feelings and genuine emotions” in primary school students' writing is constructed(Analytic Model of Attitudinal Individuality).At the stage of empirical study,the real writings of a class of students are analyzed using UAM CorpusTool.The reasons for the attitudinal individuality are also discussed with the help of referential materials.This dissertation has the following findings:1.“True feelings and genuine emotions” in students' writing corresponds to the attitude system in appraisal system;2.Analytic Model of Attitudinal Individuality is applicable in the analysis of attitudinal resources in students' writing;3.Attitudinal individuality exists in students' writing and is indicated in the choosing,distribution and the specific wording of attitudinal resources,which could be explained through writing capacity and affiliation strategy;4.Attitudinal collectivity also exists in students' writing and is indicated mainly in the choosing of positive attitudes and of certain expressions,which is the result of social semantic allocation required by contemporary Chinese moral education.Theoretically,this dissertation constructs an analytic model for the study of attitudinal individuality in students' writing.Empirically,the dissertation refutes remarks that there is no “true feelings and genuine emotions” in students' writing,and also discussed the reasons for the individuality and collectivity of students' attitudes.