英语专业四级写作中的元话语使用分析(2)

菜单

4.4 Statistic analysis of interactional resources 15

4.5 Discussion 16

5. Conclusions and Implications 19

5.1 Conclusions 19

5.2 Implications 20

Works Cited 21

1. Introduction

As we know, learns’ writing is close related to the appropriate use of metadiscourse. And to know of the situation of English majors’ metadiscourse in their compositions is necessary for teachers and learners so as to improve the quality of English writing. Generally speaking, a complete discourse is supposed to be pided into two levels, primary discourse and metadiscourse. Primary discourse provides relevant information about discourse topic and expands propositional meanings. Metadiscourse was first put forward by Zelling Harris in 1959 and referred to a way of understanding language use or indicating the way of authors or speakers to guide audience to understand discourse (Harris, 1959). It guides readers to organize, interpret, evaluate, and react to the propositional information. Its patterns of manifestation are mainly including words, phrases, short sentences, clauses, punctuation, charts and even paragraphs. It is widely used in different literary forms and plays an indispensible role in writing. Besides, the achievements of metadiscourse in applied areas have increased. This chapter first describes the background of this study. Following this, this chapter goes on to the significance of this study. At last, this chapter introduces the overall structure of this study.

1.1Background of this study

TEM 4, abbreviated for Test for English Major-4, is the exam for nationwide college English majors and the content of this exam covers listening, reading, writing and translating to test the comprehensive competence of English majors. Thus, writing is an important content of examination of TEM 4. The researches on L2 writing have prospered in recent years. This study mainly focuses on analysis of metadiscourse in TEM 4 compositions.

A growing number of linguists focus their attention on the research of metadiscourse from various perspectives. In academic discourse, most linguists will discuss the impacts of textual function of metadiscourse on understanding of academic discourse, including written and spoken language. Moreover，more and more scholars have paid more attention to metadiscourse in applied discourse, and they have done a great deal of research on metadiscourse in applied genres, such as news commentaries, English writings, speeches and so on. 源.自|751,:论`文'网www.751com.cn

1.2 Significance of this study

Although linguists have made great achievements in applied areas of metadiscourse, but the studies of metadiscourse using in writing of English examination are not many now. TEM 4 is a very important exam for English majors and their grades of TEM 4 are relevant to their graduation from college and future employment. In TEM 4, writing is a vital test content in the examination because the score of composition has a direct effect on the total points. However at the same time, writing is the weakness of the most examinees. During the test, examinees are pressed for time and have many questions to answer. Number of words in writing requires 200.When they come to writing, it is the last content in the test and little time is left. Many students spend plenty of time on practicing writing but sometimes the results have not lived up to their expectations. Many of them have difficulty in writing and make every effort to improve it to pass the exam.

According to research findings of scholars, the frequency and effectiveness of metadiscourse used in writing have a great influence on the composition, especially that of TEM 4. This paper will make an analysis on the use of metadiscourse in the writing of examinees based on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse to explore the relationship between the using of metadiscourse and the quality of compositions. The study means to be of significance to college English writing teaching. On one hand, it means to help students understand and master the knowledge of metadiscoure by learning the use of metadicourse and apply it into writing to improve their writing competence. On the other hand, it makes teachers pay attention to teaching the knowledge of metadicourse and how to use metadicourse properly in different styles of writing.