Discourse features of ielts sample essays a functional grammar perspective

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANGUNIVERSITYOFFOREIGNLANGUAGES TUDIES NGUYỄNTHỊTRUNG DISCOURSEFEATURESOFIELTSSAMPLEESSAYS -AFUNCTIONALGRAMMARPERSPECTIVE Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICSCode:9.22.02.01 DOCTORALTHESIS INSOCIALSCIENCESANDHUMANITIES SUPERVISOR:Assoc.Prof.Dr.NguyenThiQuynhHoa Danang,2021 STATEMENTOFAUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text, this thesis contains no materialpublished elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I havequalifiedfororbeenawardedanotherdegreeordiploma Nootherperson'sworkhasbeenusedwithoutdueacknowledgementsinthe thesis Thisthesishasnotbeensubmittedfortheawardofanydegreeordiplomain anyother tertiaryinstitution DaNang, November 2021 NguyenThi Trung ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Above all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, AssociateProfessor Nguyễn Thị Quỳnh Hoa, for her understanding, encouragement, helpfulcommentsandprofessionalguidanceateverystageofthisthesis IamalsodeeplyindebtedtoAssociateProfessorTrầnVănPhướcforhisconstructivefeedback,distrib utionofmaterials,andcontinuingsupport My special thanks goes to Professor Hoàng Văn Vân, and Associate Professor PhanVăn Hòa for their advice in the first steps of the research paper, saving me fromconfusion My heartfelt gratitude goes to Associate Professor Tôn Nữ Mỹ Nhật for her astutecommentsandencouragement IwouldliketoexpressmydeepestappreciationtotheUniversityofForeignLanguage Studies, The University of Danang and the Faculty of English for theirgeneroussupportandtimelyassistance Finally, I am indebted to my family for their love, care and sacrifice; and to mycolleaguesand friendsforall their encouragementand untiringassistance ABSTRACT Over the past three decades, the International English Language Testing System(IELTS)hasbeenconsideredasthepreferredtesttoassessEnglishlanguageprofici ency of non-native English speakers With a view to improving the quality ofIELTS candidates’ answers to the academic writing test, the thesis addresses threeaspectsofmeaning,namelytextual,interpersonalandexperientialmeaninginformu latingI E L T S A c a d e m i c e s s a y s b a s e d o n t h e S y s t e m i c F u n c t i o n a l T h e o r y developedbyHalliday(1994),andHallidayandMatthiessen(2004,2014).Ad escriptivemethodaccompaniedbyqualitativeandquantitativeapproacheswasusedto give a detailed descriptionofthreekindsofmeaninginrelationtothebanddescriptors 180 sample essays with band scores of 7.0-7.5 and others rated wereselected as data for text analysis The findings revealed that the prevailing types ofThemes deployed in the essays were multiple Themes, demonstrating high levels ofEnglishproficiencyamongIELTSwritersinconstitutingamessage.Itisalsonoticeable that more successful IELTS writers favoured marked topical Themes andexhibitedtacticalmanipulationofthematicprogressiontoarrangeinformationlogically in the text From the perspective of interpersonal metafunction, successfulwriters were good at building up and maintaining appropriate relationships withexaminers thanks to appropriate modality and mood choice In terms of experientialmeaning, the writers employed more clause complexes than clause simplexes tospecify the type of interdependency in the texts From the findings, it is recommendedthat IELTS writers should choose clause complexes over clause simplexes, makegooduseofcohesivedevices,modalityandmoodchoice,differenttypesofinterdepe ndency as well as deploy multiple Themes In particular, more markedThemes,andsubtlyafewinterpersonalThemesaresuggestedtobedeployedinorderto create logical connections between experiential events and tomake the writingmore academic It is obvious that IELTS test-takers with better insights into thesalient linguistic features of IELTS essays in terms of thematic structure, cohesion,mood, modality, logico-semantic relation and transitivity can produce a piece ofwriting in accordance with the IELTS community expectation, theperceivedanddesiredIELTSbandscore thus reaching TABLEOFCONTENTS CHAPTERONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 AimsandObjectives ofthe Study .3 1.2.1 Aims 1.2.2 Objectives .3 1.3 ResearchQuestions 1.4 Scope oftheStudy 1.5 Significance oftheStudy 1.6 OrganizationoftheThesis 1.7 Terminology CHAPTERTWO 11 LITERATUREREVIEWANDTHEORETICALBACKGROUND 11 2.1 LiteratureReview 11 2.1.1 ReviewofSystemicFunctional Linguistics 11 2.1.2 Review of Studies Related to Academic Writing in the light of SystemicFunctionalLinguistics 13 2.1.3 ReviewofIELTSAcademicWritingStudies 16 2.2 TheoreticalBackground 19 2.2.1 IELTSWriting asAcademicWriting 19 2.2.1.1 Academic Writing 19 2.2.1.2 TheIELTSTest 20 2.2.1.3 IELTS WritingasAcademic Writing 22 2.2.2 DiscourseAnalysisthroughSystemicFunctional Linguistics 30 2.2.3 Context:CultureandSituation .30 2.2.4 TheThreeMetafunctions 33 2.2.4.1 TextualMetafunction 34 2.2.4.2 Interpersonal Metafunction 46 2.2.4.3 Experiential Metafunction 52 2.3 Summary .61 CHAPTERTHREE .62 RESEARCHMETHODOLOGY 62 3.1 ResearchDesign .62 3.2 ResearchMethods 63 3.3 DataCollection 64 3.3.1 CriteriaforCollectingData 64 3.3.2 Description ofSampling .65 3.4 DataAnalysis 67 3.4.1 ClauseandAbovetheClause 67 3.4.2 The CodingScheme 68 3.5 AnalyticFramework 73 3.6 Reliability andValidity 74 3.7 Summary .75 CHAPTERFOUR 76 TEXTUALMEANINGINIELTSACADEMICSAMPLEESSAYS 76 4.1 ThematicStructure 76 4.1.1 TypesofThemes 76 4.1.1.1 MarkedandUnmarkedTheme 77 4.1.1.2 Topical,InterpersonalandTextualTheme 80 4.1.1.3 SimpleandMultipleTheme 84 4.1.2 ThematicProgression 87 4.2 Cohesion 95 4.2.1 GrammaticalTies 96 4.2.1.1 TheUseofReference 96 4.2.1.2 TheUseofSubstitution 98 4.2.1.3 TheUseofEllipsis .99 4.2.1.4 TheUseofConjunction 99 4.2.2 LexicalTies 101 4.2.2.1 TheUseofReiteration 101 4.2.2.2 TheUseofCollocation .103 4.3 TextualMeaninginRelationtotheIELTSBandDescriptors 108 4.4 Summary .110 CHAPTERFIVE 112 INTERPERSONALMEANINGINIELTSACADEMICSAMPLEESSAYS 112 5.1 MoodStructure 112 5.2 Modality 114 5.3 InterpersonalMeaningin RelationtotheIELTSBandDescriptors .122 5.4 Summary .123 CHAPTERSIX 125 EXPERIENTIALMEANINGINIELTSACADEMICSAMPLEESSAYS 125 6.1 Logico-Semantic RelationAnalysis 125 6.1.1 TaxisSystem 125 6.1.2.Logico-SemanticSystem 132 6.2 TransitivityStructure 137 6.3 Experiential Meaningin RelationtotheIELTS Band Descriptors 144 6.4 Summary .146 CHAPTERSEVEN 148 CONCLUSION 148 7.1 Conclusions 148 7.2 Implications 150 7.3 Limitations 153 7.4 Suggestions forFurtherResearch .154 PUBLICATIONLISTS .155 REFERENCES 156 APPENDIXA:SOURCESOFDATA .175 APPENDIXB:SUMMARYOFTABLEOFCONJUNCTIVERELATIONS 188 LISTOFABBREVIATIONS ANDSYMBOLS CEFR CommonEuropeanFrameworkofReferenceIELTS The International English Language Testing SystemMOET MinistryofEducationandTraining NFL Vietnam’s National Foreign Language ProjectSFG Systemic FunctionalGrammar SFL Systemic Functional LinguisticsTOEFL TestofEnglishasaForeignLanguage || clausedivider ||| clausecomplexdivider ^ clauseconjunction α,β,Ɣ hypotactic related clauses1,2,3,… paratacticrelatedclauses ’ Idea ” Locution + Extension = Elaboration X Enhancement […] Embedding LIST OF TABLES Table2.1.I E L T S Task2Writingbanddescriptors(public version) 28 Table2.2.C o n j u n c t i v e adjuncts 37 Table2.3.M o o d a d j u n c t s 38 Table2.4.T y p e s ofgrammaticalandlexicalcohesion 40 Table2.5.G i v i n g ordemanding .47 Table2.6.R e a l i z a t i o n ofmodality inEnglish 51 Table2.7.E x a m p l e s ofverbsservingasProcessin materialclauses 54 Table2.8.E x a m p l e s ofverbsservingasProcessinmentalclauses 55 Table2.9.E x a m p l e s ofverbs servingasProcessinrelationalclauses 56 Table2.10.E x a m p l e s o f verbsserving asProcessinbehavioural clauses 57 Table2.11.E x a m p l e s o f verbsserving asProcessinverbalclauses 57 Table2.12.E x a m p l e s ofverbsserving asProcessinexistentialclauses 58 Table2.13.C l a u s e s inparatacticand hypotaticclausecomplexes 59 Table2.14.B a s i c typesofclausecomplexes 61 Table3.1.C o d i n g scheme 68 Table3.2.A b b r e v i a t i o n fordataanalysis 69 Table4.1.C o h e s i v e ties 95 Table4.2.G r a m m a t i c a l ties 96 Table4.3.L e x i c a l ties 101 Table4.4.T e x t u a l m e a n i n g inrelationtothe IELTSbanddescriptors 109 Table5.1.M o o d types .112 Table5.2.S p e e c h function .113 Table5.3.InterpersonalmeaninginrelationtotheIELTSbanddescriptors 123 Table6.1.D i s t r i b u t i o n ofclausesimplexesandclausecomplexes .126 Table6.2.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation 132 Table6.3.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation(Corpus1) 133 Table6.4.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation (Corpus 1-Discussionessays) .133 Table6.5.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation (Corpus 1-Expositionessays) .133 Table6.6.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation(Corpus2) 134 Table6.7.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation (Corpus 2-Discussionessays) .134 Table6.8.D i s t r i b u t i o n oflogico-semanticrelation (Corpus 2-Expositionessays) .134 Table6 E x p e r i e n t i a l m e a n i n g i n r e l a t i o n t o t h e I E L T S b a n d d e s c r i p t o r s 145