Changes And Features In The Distribution Patterns Of Ideational Grammatical Metaphors By English Majors In China

Halliday(2000)stated that ideational grammatical metaphor(IGM) is a kind of mutation among the six processes and the functional constituents relating the processes of the transitivity system.This thesis investigated the features and changes in the distribution patterns of IGM by English majors in China from the aspects of verbal nominalization, adjective nominalization and verbalization, a classification raised by Zhu Yongsheng (2006). The research questions are:1) Compared with the English native speakers, to what extent do the Chinese English majors demonstrate differences relating the frequency of IGM expressions adopted? 2) Are there obvious changes in IGM distribution among the students of different grades? If there are, what are the distribution patterns like?The data involved argumentative writings from the English majors of Year One to Year Four in Southwest Jiaotong University, each grade containing 40-50 samples. The 30 sample writings of English natives were collected from the textbook Contemporary College English (Intermediate Writing, Patterns of Argumentative). An analysis of the frequency of each variable in samples has the following findings:First, there exist big gaps between Chinese English majors and English natives in the use of IGM. The period of Year Two witnessed the largest number of IGM items created by the English majors, while Year Three produced the greatest number of postmodifier participle forms. Still this kind of metaphor expressions written by English majors are much less in frequency compared with those by native speakers. Furthermore, Year Two also saw the peak of frequency of adverbial participle phrases applied by the Chinese. However, among the four grades, only freshmen produced significantly fewer number of adverbial participle forms. The lower frequency of IGM used by the English majors justifies the prevailing phenomenon of the English majors at tertiary level still having difficulty achieving native like competence in English.Second, the great changes in IGM distribution among different grades exhibited an "increase—decrease" tendency. To be specific, the time from Grade One to Grade Three experiences a rise in frequency relating IGM structures by the English majors. However, the reduction of these patterns appears in Grade Four.The above findings can be pedagogically implicative:Firstly, English language teachers in China may use of the technique of contrastive analysis to help locate what linguistic items need remedying. Secondly, they should aim at developing learners'awareness of syntactic complexity and diversity when teaching English writings. Thirdly, the time of Year One and Year Two should be made good use of since it is when the students'language competence develops very quickly. Fourth, in the period of higher grades, teachers should encourage students to go on practicing their language skills as they do in Year One and Year Two.