Exploring Voices: The Macrofunctions of Language within a Community of Practice

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This present study explores ideational, interpersonal, and textual voices of three groups of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese students in an EFL writing course at a university in Korea. The data comprise nine students’ opinion writing and interviews with them. The ‘macrofunctions of language’ (Halliday, 1985) and Toulmin (2003) elements as the main frameworks were used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that the Korean students had the same topic, whereas Chinese and Japanese students focused on a variety of issues on their daily lives and L1 to generate ideas and construct outlines of writing in the ideational voice. In the interpersonal voice, 78% of the students wanted to have an idea sharer, a frank friend, or a listener as their ideal reader rather than receiving an authoritative feedback from the teacher. In the textual voice, all the students, except one Korean, included the basic Toulmin elements, claim, data, and warrant but few of the second-level elements, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal n their essays. The first pronoun ‘I’ took the role of opinion-holder in students’ texts. Based on these findings, implications are made for teachers to take into account writer voice in writing classrooms of mixed ethnic groups.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. INTRODUCTION
• Ⅱ. LITERATURE REVIEW
• Ⅲ. METHOD
• Ⅳ. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
• Ⅴ. CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES