A Study Of Interpersonal Meanings Of Previews In New Horizon College English-Reading And Writing Course

As a classic textbook,New Horizon College English-Reading and Writing Course(NHCERWC)has been widely praised by English teachers since its publication.However,the interpersonal meanings of previews are often ignored in NHCERWC.Considering this situation,this paper adopts the interpersonal metafunction of Systemic Functional Grammar put forward by Halliday,to explore interpersonal meanings of previews in NHCERWC by means of quantitative and qualitative methods.This dissertation aims to answer the following questions:1)What are the frequency and distribution of mood and modality in NHCERWC?2)What are the interpersonal meanings of previews?3)Why do previews express such interpersonal meanings?The results show that:1)The distribution and frequency of mood types,modality types,modality orientations and modality values are different.The declarative mood occurs more frequently than the interrogative mood,while the interrogative mood is much more frequent than the imperative mood.Among modality types,modalization is much more frequently used than modulation.In terms of probability,should and may are used most commonly,and in terms of frequency,always and sometimes are used most commonly.As for modality orientations,the implicit subjective is the most common type,while in terms of modality values,the low value is used most frequently,and the high value is used least frequently.2)From the perspective of mood,the interpersonal meaning of previews is to introduce background knowledge;develop students’ thinking ability,seek information,cultivate students’practical ability,interact with students and arouse students’interest in reading;guide students to think and do things.The declarative mood provides different background information,which lays a good foundation for the major communicative intent of the text,i.e.,training students’ thinking capacity.The interrogative mood trains students’ thinking quality,which includes the cultivation of logical thinking,critical thinking and innovative thinking.At the same time,it encourages students to take actions in real life by interacting with them.The imperative mood plays a role in guiding students to think and directing them to put what they think into practice.From the perspective of modality,previews can guide students to think and form correct value by presupposing the rightfulness of things and strengthening the sense of responsibility.Previews can also guide students to think about problems and encourage them to solve them.Besides,previews can make opinions persuasive by expressing them appropriately.They can also narrow the gap between the textbook and students,and arouse students interest in reading the text by soltening the tone of expressions and encouraging students.3)The reason why such interpersonal meanings are expressed is closely related to major goals of English discipline,i.e.,to develop students’ core abilities.The introduction of background knowledge can help students to construct a new knowledge structure,and the cultivation of thinking quality is helpful to improve students’ ability to analyze and solve problems.Encouraging students to take actions can train students’ practical ability.Setting up correct value shows that the English subject is not just to teach language knowledge to students,but to educate them as whole persons.