英语教学中的英文写作_英国论文

　　本研究旨在探讨我国高校英语专业学生写作中英语关系从句使用的情形。研究的目的在于了解我国英语程度较好的英语学习者的关系从句习得，以及关系从句在论文计划写作中被使用的情形并探究其话语功能和使用时机。本研究以12位英语专业的学生所撰写的文章为资料分析来源，并使用频率计算和文本分析加以质性分析。

　　The purposes for conducting this study are to examine the acquisition of relative clauses by Chinese learners with higher English proficiency and their relative clause use in academic proposal writing, further disclosing the discourse functions of relative clauses and their situational use in proposals. An analysis of some relative clauses elicited from 12 college English students’ proposals was conducted through executing frequency counts and textual analysis.

　　因此本论文认为，大多数限制性关系从句会出现在话语单位最前面的位置，是因为它们有一个很重要的话语功能，那就是它们要引介新的先行词作为整个话语单位的主题。此外，本研究也探讨大学英文系学生在他们的英文写作中，使用限制性关系从句的情形。本研究旨在探讨我国高校英语专业学生写作中英语关系从句使用的情形。

　　The findings of the present study indicated that Chinese college students commonly use relative clause constructions in their proposal writing and they largely have acquired the use of English relative clauses except restrictive and non-restrictive functions. Moreover, Chinese graduate students have not completely mastered the specific used forms of relative clauses in academic writing.

　　Most workers spend eight or nine hours on the job. They work because it’s unavoidable. They need to make enough money for necessities: food, rent, clothing, transportation, tuition, and so on. They spend about one-third of their lives at work, but they hate it. They complain and count the minute until quitting time each day—or the days until their next vacation.

　　By contrast, there are some people who are actually enjoy work—in fact, they love to work. They spend many extra hours on the job each week and often take work home with them. These workaholics are as addicted to their jobs as other people are to drugs or alcohol.

　　In text, the RRC is an S-relative and the main purpose of the RRC is to provide new information for the firstly-introduced head NP. It thus performs description function, and further paves the way for the new head NP to be the topic of the following discourse. Besides, the information in the S-relative not only involves the opening of the new referent, but it also informs the reader of the information that is going to be developed in the following discourse. In text (20), the textual relation between discourse units [1] and [2] are contrast, which is indicated by the adverbial by contrast. We can see that the RRC occurs in the beginning position of discourse unit [2]. The RRC here is an A-relative and it performs grounding function in that the object of the A-relative, work, has already been mentioned in the previous discourse, it thus provides an anchor to relate the new information, some people, to the whole discourse. Grounding a new NP by virtue of the given referent in an A-relative is thus a way of warranting the NP’s introduction at the point where it is mentioned. Furthermore, the A-relative introduces the new head NP as the topic in the following discourse, as indicated by the reoccurring referent they.

　　In Chapter Two, we have noted that different syntactic types of Restrictive Relative Clauses may contribute to different discourse functions. In the following sections, we aim to investigate the major discourse function of each syntactic type. So, we first classify Restrictive Relative Clauses in the beginning of discourse units into different syntactic types: S-relatives, A-relatives, and O-relatives. Then, we make an attempt to find out the major function of each syntactic type.

　　In the native speakers’ data, we found that S-relatives and A-relatives [p4] predominate over O-relatives. Table 2 presents the frequency of the syntactic types of Restrictive Relative Clauses occurring in the initial positions of discourse units.

　　S-relatives and A-relatives[p5] all together constitute 93% (139/150) of the Restrictive Relative Clauses in the beginning of discourse units: 50% of the head NPs serve as intransitive subjects for S-relatives, and 43% as transitive subjects for A-relatives. A much smaller group is transitive objects for O-relatives in the data.

　　S-relatives make up the highest frequency of the Restrictive Relative Clauses in the beginning of discourse units. In order to find out the main function of S-relatives, we classify the functions of S-relatives into grounding and description. Table 3 summaries the functions of S-relatives in the beginning of discourse units.

　　From Table 3, we can see that the most common function of S-relatives is a description function. 67% (50 out of 75) of S-relatives perform description function whereas 33% (25 out of 75) of S-relatives serve proposition-linking grounding function.

　　The tendency for S-relatives performing proposition-linking grounding to co-occur with new head NPs in the subject positions of main clauses can be explained from grounding perspective. As noted previously, to ground a NP is to locate this referent in conversational space and to make this referent relevant for the hearer/reader by relating it to a given entity or a given proposition already established in the prior discourse. Thus, grounding is a way of warranting the introduction of a new referent at the time when it is firstly mentioned by linking it to the previous discourse. The occurrence of the S-relatives performing proposition-linking grounding with new head NPs in the subject position of main clauses can be viewed from this perspective. When a new NP is introduced in the subject position of a main clause, it is generally not grounded until we get to the relative clause. Take an example, the new NP another untrue story is not grounded when firstly introduced in the subject position of the main clause until the old information coded in the S-relative having been reported in many places is provided. It will thus be a major task of the S-relative to ground the new head NP and make it contextually relevant to the discourse. S-relatives in the subject position of main clauses thus serve as a vehicle to ground their new head NPs by means of providing proposition-linking information already evoked in the prior discourse to anchor their new head NPs. From discussion above, we can see that the majority of S-relatives in the beginning of discourse units function as description and they tend to occur at the end of sentences. S-relatives in the beginning positions of discourse units not only provide description for the newly introduced referents, but they also pave the way for the new head NPs. The information coded in the S-relatives may involve the information that will be constructed in the subsequent discourse. Therefore, S-relatives are a major way of introducing their new head NPs as topics in the ongoing discourse when they occur in the beginning positions of discourse units.

　　In contrast to the majority of S-relatives serving description function, a few S-relatives serve proposition-linking grounding function. Such S-relatives tend to occur in the beginning of main clauses, and most of their head NPs are new referents. We provide an explanation for the occurrence of S-relatives with new head NPs in the subject positions of main clauses in terms of grounding mechanism. By providing grounding function, S-relative can anchor new discourse entities at the particular point of the text where they are firstly introduced, thereby making new referents relevant to the discourse.

　　Following S-relatives, A-relatives[p6] make up the second highest frequency of Restrictive Relative Clauses in the beginning of discourse units. Table 4 presents the frequency of the discourse functions of A-relatives in the beginning of discourse units.

　　The high frequency of A-relatives performing given entity grounding function may stem from the following facts. The NPs in the object positions of A-relatives here play an important role, serving as the linking between the current sentence and the preceding discourse in the beginning of a new discourse unit. Most NPs in the object positions of the A-relatives we found are given information. According to our data analysis, as shown in Table 5, 77% of the NPs in the object positions of the A-relatives are given information, including previously mentioned discourse entities or inferable discourse entities from the prior mentions through logical reasoning. Besides, as shown in Table 6, the head NPs of the A-relatives in the beginning of discourse units tend to be new information since in a new discourse unit, a new discourse topic is often introduced. From this evidence, we conclude that most A-relatives occurring in the beginning of a new discourse unit perform grounding function by relating firstly-introduced head NPs to the given entities in A-relatives. The A-relatives use the NPs in the object positions as the bridge to connect a newly-introduced discourse entity (the new head NP) with a given referent (the given object in an A-relative) in the beginning of a new discourse unit. The A-relatives make the newly-introduced entities a relevant part in the discourse and present them to be further discussed in the following discourse.

　　From the discussion above, we can see that the majority of the head NPs of A-relatives performing grounding function are new information. In addition, from Table 4, we can see that 25% of the A-relatives served escription function. We found that the head NPs of the A-relatives performing description function tend to be new information and likewise, http://www.ukassignment.org/uklunwen/ the NPs in A-relatives tend to be new discourse entities.

　　From the discussion above, we can see that the majority of the A-relatives in the beginning of discourse units perform grounding function by having the given entities in the A-relatives anchor the newly introduced head NPs. Most of the A-relatives performing grounding function occur with their new head NPs at the end of main clauses. They not only ground the new head NPs, but also formulate the new head NPs as the topics in the subsequent discourse.

　　Besides, there are still some A-relatives performing grounding function which occur with the new head NPs in existential-presentative sentences. The explanation for such occurrence we have constructed consists of two parts. First, existential-presentative sentences are grammatical devices for introducing new referents for subsequent development. Second, they tend to co-occur with Restrictive Relative Clauses that establish the relevance of the newly introduced referents to the whole discourse. It thus follows that the purpose of using A-relatives performing grounding function in existential-presentative sentences is to provide a bridge that makes newly introduced referents relevant to the discourse. Therefore, the given referents in A-relatives serve as anchors to ground new referent and make them relevant to the whole discourse. And the A-relatives further present the new head NPs as the topics in the subsequent discourse. Following these findings, we conclude that when A-relatives serving grounding function occur with new head NPs in the beginning of discourse units, they can be viewed as a device that introduces their new head NPs for subsequent development in the incoming discourse.