文献导读 | 系统功能视角下外语写作者在摘要写作中的题材意识和语义建构过程

摘要

Based on the framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this study investigates the changes in foreign language (FL) writers’ genre awareness and meaning-making choices when instantiating the genre of summary over a semester-long course. The participants were 30 undergraduate students at different proficiency levels. The students’ developmental changes were analyzed using an in-depth qualitative analysis of their reflective comments in conjunction with their performances on pre- and post-instructional summary writing tasks. The findings indicate that as the students engaged in the SFL-informed genre analysis tasks, they began to explore not only ideational but also interpersonal and textual meanings, which are required to fulfill the rhetorical demands of summary writing. In addition, their lexicogrammatical choices also shifted toward more genre appropriate ones. However, proficiency effects were markedly observed in terms of how and to what degree the students were able to grammatically elaborate sophisticated expressions that help realize the genre. These findings highlight the importance of a SFL approach to teaching summary writing to FL writers. That is, although the degree to which students benefit from the tasks differs according to their proficiency levels, genre-specific language learning can be pushed by a SFL framework that enhances writers’ awareness of the tripartite interconnectedness among ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings in specific FL instances, in this case, summary. This paper concludes that SFL can provide a renewed understanding of FL writers’ development and help writing-to-learn and learning-to-write fruitfully cross-pollinate to enhance the FL development of students.

简介Brief Introduction

理论框架：系统功能语法

研究问题 Research Questions

     (1) How does their genre awareness and knowledge change over time?

     (2) How do their lexicogrammatical choices in summarizing source information change over time?

研究方法 Research Methods 

问卷调查、实验研究、文本分析

研究过程：开学初，对30名生物学方向的研究生进行调查问卷并让30名受试者对特定文章进行概述，以此来分析30受试者的概述体裁意识及概述能力；随后对30名受试者进行长达一学期的（15周）概述体裁教学并指导其分析概述文中所反映出的概念意义、交际意义及语篇意义；学期末，对30名受试者再次进行问卷调查及概述能力测试。

研究发现：30名受试者的概述体裁意识整体上都有所增强；受试者学期末的概述较之开学初的概述在词汇语法选择上有不同程度的提高。

读后感 Comment 

（1）本文以系统功能语法为理论框架来探讨外语学习者在概述写作上的体裁意识及所选择的意义表达方式的变化，把经典理论与实证研究相结合，研究角度值得借鉴。

（2）本文的教学实验设计简单明了，另外本文对研究对象和数据收集和分析过程的阐述十分详实且附有相关例子，因此文章的可读性很强。