An Analysis On Attitude Resources In English Personal Statements

With the booming of overseas study, more attention has been paid to application essays, one of which is the personal statement. It functions as a brief description of the applicant’s educational background, research achievements, application purpose, directions of future study and vocational goals, etc. In fact, it is not easy to write a successful personal statement. Besides being fluent in language, it should also be strict in logic and clear in arrangement to fully demonstrate their personal skills and abilities to achieve the final purpose of persuasion. When there is no face-to-face opportunity to communicate directly with the admission committee, the personal statement may become a critical device to present the applicant’s ability and qualifications. What is more, it may determine whether the application can be admitted or not.Thus, to explore the persuasive devices in successful personal statements is of great importance for the applicants.The main purpose of the personal statement is to convince the admission committee that the applicants are qualified for higher studies. So in order to achieve the persuasive purpose, there must be abundant evaluative resources in the personal statement, such as evaluations on personal abilities and skills, evaluations on personal education background and social practice,evaluations on the applicants’ previous and future universities, etc. There are many researches on the personal statement and Appraisal Theory, but few studies on the personal statement have been made from the perspective of Appraisal Theory. For this reason, the author combines the Appraisal Theory with the personal statement, which is a breakthrough theoretically and practically.Within the framework of Appraisal Theory, the author carries out the research following these procedures:Firstly, the author chooses 30 English personal statements written by Chinese applicants who have successfully enrolled by famous American universities for postgraduate studies, which are of great research values. Secondly, the author adopts the quantitative method to label and calculate the attitude resources concerned with the applicants’ personal evaluations in the samples. Thus, the distribution of affect, judgment and appreciation resources can be given.Thirdly, based on careful calculations, the distribution rules and features of attitude resources inEnglish personal statements are gathered to analyze how the applicants use appraisal resources to achieve the purpose of persuasion within the framework of Appraisal Theory. Finally, the author uses qualitative method to analyze some typical examples in detail. Consequently, it is available to provide Chinese applicants with some useful and effective methods to write high-quality personal statements and pass the application successfully.Based on the above analysis, the following findings are found from the present study:1. Based on careful analysis on attitude resources, we find that judgment resources rank the first among the three sub-categories, followed by appreciation resources and affect resources. As for judgment resources, the applicants prefer to use social esteem to achieve the purpose of persuasion, while social sanction is seldom used. As for appreciation resources, applicants frequently use positive reaction, while valuation ranks the second and then it is composition. As for affect resources, the occurrences of satisfaction and inclination are the highest, while the occurrence of happiness and security are comparatively lower.2. The reason for the distribution: 1) As a promotional application essay, it is clear that the purpose of the personal statement is to persuade the admission committee to accept the applicants. So it is reasonable that applicants frequently use judgment resources to present their knowledge and abilities. 2) As a formal document, the personal statement should avoid too much objective expressions. And that is the reason why affect resources are comparatively lower than the other two kinds of attitude resources.3. In order to show their own abilities and qualifications, the applicants prefer to use positive attitudes, especially positive judgments and appreciations. Usually they focus on lexical level to achieve their purpose and they also use clauses to realize the persuasive purpose.