The Journal of Studies in Language ISSN:1225-4770(Print) 2671-6151(Online) 언어연구

The study examines the linguistic resources used in the self-introduction produced by English learners at university level. According to Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), language is functional. Whether the learners are novices or proficient users, employ language as linguistic resources to make meanings. Moreover, social and cultural contexts play important roles when making choices among those linguistic resources. The study aims to determine what linguistic choices the English language learners make in order to make meanings in their writing. Following the SFL theoretical framework, the study looks at the English linguistic resources in terms of three metafunctions. For the ideational metafunction, the content words, prepositional phrases, and adverbial clauses are examined to see what the learners try to convey through the texts. For the interpersonal metafunction, verbial phrases are looked at to understand how the learners form the relationship with the reader through their linguistic choices. Furthermore, the thematic development of the texts is examined to see how the learners develop their introduction to perform the textual metafunction. The results of the study reveal that the English learners demonstrate a certain degree of limitations in utilizing the linguistic resources in terms of all three metafunctions.