| English argumentative writing is a very important skill in English majors’learning, and the proper use of appraisal resources can improve the expression ofstudents’ attitude towards events so as to influence and persuade the readers.Based on Martin’s Appraisal System, the study adopts contrastive interlanguageanalysis to explore the characteristics of appraisal resources in English majors’argumentative writings. The thesis aims to address the following questions:⑴Whatare the similarities and differences of appraisal resources in argumentative writingsproduced by English majors and British university students?⑵What are linguisticssimilarities and differences in terms of appraisal resources between English majorsand English native college students? The corpora of this study include English nativespeaker(Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays, known as LOCNESS), of which33essays titled ‘A Single Europe: A Loss of Sovereignty for Britain’; the othercorpus is made by the author,33English majors in Grade Three from HebeiUniversity of Science and Technology are required to write a essay with the same title.On the basis of Martin＆White’s Appraisal System, the author used BFSU QualitativeCorder to code the two corpora.The results are showing in the follows:1. The differences of appraisal resourcesin the two corpora is: entertain(-)﹥affect (+)﹥disclaim (-)﹥force (-)﹥appreciation (-)﹥focus (-)﹥judgment (-)﹥proclaim (-)﹥attribute (-).(+)represents the overused and (-) indicates the underused.2. In terms of attitude system,English majors mainly use adjectives and verbs; In addition to adjectives and verbs,British university students also choose nominalization to express attitude.3. In termsof engagement system, entertain resources are widely used, but excessive use ofmodal verbs is obvious in English majors’ argumentative writings. Both Englishmajors and British university students use less attribute resources. Through observingthe contexts of attribute, the research found that British university students can notonly enhance his argument by referring to the perspectives of others but also expresstheir own opinion about others’ view. However, English majors only use others’ viewas a quotation. Disclaim resources are widely used by English majors and Britishuniversity students, the two group of students focus on the use of disclaim to makereaders support themselves and then opposes the third view;4. In terms of graduationsystem, force resources are found in large quantities in the two group of students, but English majors excessively use ‘very’ and ‘just’; English majors significantly underuse focus resources and rarely used soften words like ‘sort of’‘somewhat’ and ‘kindof’ etc.Based on the above findings, teachers should add the introduction of appraisalresources in the teaching of writing; At the same time, learners should expand theirvocabulary in the future to benefit their learning, with more abundant appraisalresources to express their attitudes and positions. |
