Transitivity Analysis of Argumentative Essays Among Higher Vocational Colleges

Abstract

Argumentative essay is a comprehensive language output activity and it is a significant English writing genre for students in China. Students should choose proper words or sentences to write their essays effectively so that they could achieve the predetermined purpose of communication. However, many essays written by students among higher vocational colleges in China show serious lexicogrammar problems. In other words, students need the right linguistic choices to realise the meanings in writing. The transitivity system which is a major system in Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL) holds great significance in analysing the choices of participants, processes and circumstances in a clause. Process is the center of the system. There are six types of process in the transitivity system, namely: material, behavioural, mental, verbal, existential, and relational. Thus, the present study utilized a descriptive qualitative approach mainly to investigate the transitivity processes among fifteen higher vocational college students’ argumentative essays. The essays collected were classified into three different levels: high-graded, middle-graded, and low-graded. The analysis was based on the model of Butt et al. (2012) under SFL. The findings showed that the main transitivity processes in the students’ essays were material, mental and relational processes, which generally conform to the characteristics of argumentative essay writing. However, compared to high-graded essays, middle-graded and low-graded essays had many incorrect or incomplete clauses, and most students were weak in proper language choices, so the pedagogical implementation is that teachers should guide students to learn the appropriate deployment of transitivity patterns for writing argumentative essays. Moreover, exploring students’ writing within the SFL framework by deploying mixed methodology may present more opportunities for effective information. It is also helpful for researchers and educators to investigate students’ other genres of writing by conducting transitivity analysis under SFL.