An analysis of high school students’ English writing from a systemic functional linguistics perspective

Abstract

From a systemic functional linguistic perspective, this paper examines high school students’ English writing with a focus on what linguistic elements are used to create particular meanings and functions in argumentative writing. Specially, 100 responses to a National English Ability Test writing item, ‘writing about one’s own opinion,’ were analyzed in three dimensions: presentation of ideas, demonstration of the writer’s point of view, and textual structure. According to the analysis results, despite a gap between low- and high-performing students, students were generally capable of writing an argumentative essay in a conventional and authoritative fashion. However, they tended to rely on a limited range of linguistic resources in the aforementioned three dimensions, lacking the ability to utilize linguistic elements needed for refined and exquisite argumentation skills. Based on such findings, we propose an approach to teaching English writing to high school students.