A Study on Transitivity Analysis of Online English Newspapers for Korean Teenagers and Its Pedagogical Implication

This study explores how online English newspapers for Korean teenagers can be utilized to enhance their text and genre awareness and promote literacy education, using Systemic Functional Linguistics’ transitivity analysis. It argues that the characteristics of news reports, which are based on the 5W 1H principle, align well with the transitivity analysis framework that includes participants, processes, and circumstances. Furthermore, it suggests that English literacy lessons that incorporate transitivity analysis of news report genre can help Korean teenagers develop a more visible and explicit understanding of the lexico-grammar and experiential meaning conveyed in news reports. Additionally, this study aims to explore the potential for critical literacy by focusing on the roles of participants and processes in news report genre. To conduct a detailed transitivity analysis of online newspapers for Korean teenagers (approximately 12 to 16 years old), three major sources, namely NE Times JUNIOR, THE JUNIOR TIMES, and THE JUNIOR HERALD, were selected. The UAM Corpus Tool v.3.3 was employed to quantitatively analyze process frequency, followed by a manual transitivity analysis of all clauses in the selected 30 text samples. The pedagogical implications derived from the transitivity analysis results for Korean EFL contexts were also addressed.