1. Introduction 1.1 Significance for study This paper uses a cover letter of a Berkeley undergraduate as a paradigm, along with 9 other cover letter templates in English to explore how interpersonal meaning is achieved from the perspective of Functional Grammar and with the focus on mood, modal auxiliary, personal pronouns in pronoun system, and tense shift and so on. The finding shows that the writing of English cover letters differ from that of Chinese by using its different devices to fulfill interpersonal meaning, which should arise our Chinese applicants#8217; attention. 1.2 the main research material as paradigm Dear HR Manager I am excited to submit my application for the Training Specialist position I saw listed in Handshake. I am confident that my relevant education, experience and skills related to this position merit your consideration. As you can see on my resume#769;, I will complete my bachelor#8217;s degree in Business Administration at UC Berkeley in May 2017. While this degree has provided me with a strong background in many aspects of business, it has also given me the opportunity to demonstrate my abilities through practical experience. As a Training Department Intern with UCSF, I was responsible for a new computer software education program. This project allowed me to develop and renew my training and organizational skills while designing a program to teach basic software applications to users with limited experience working with computers. The success of this program has been so overwhelming that the department has integrated it into their new start training course. Through my experiences at UCSF, it became clear to me that training and development is an incredible passion of mine #8211; whether I am facilitating or designing them, I aim to make all trainings innovative, executive and fun. Yahoo is known for being one of the best employers to work for in the world, in part because of its innovative, inclusive and welcoming training programs. For this reason, I am particularly excited to be applying for this position in hopes that I may have the opportunity to contribute to such a reputable team in creating and providing top quality employee training. Although the enclosed resume#769; thoroughly outlines my education and experience, I would appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate in an interview my knowledge of employee training and development, initiative, and interpersonal skills. You can contact me at (650)555-5555 to set up an interview. I look forward to hearing from you soon. I will combine the material with detailed study to manifest the interpersonal meaning mainly realized by the system of Mood and modality. 2. Literature review 2.1 Functional grammar Functional Grammar grew out of the work of J.F. Firth and was mainly developed by Halliday. It is a theory of language centered on the notion of function. Halliday proposed that language has three meta-functions, the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. Interpersonally, the grammar is not a theory but a way of doing; it is our construction of social relationships, both those that define society and our own place in it, and those that pertain to the immediate dialogic situation. This constitutes the interpersonal meta-function, whereby language constructs our social collective and, thereby, our personal being (Halliday Matthiessen, 1999).In other word, the interpersonal function plays the role of setting up and maintaining social relations, and indicates the roles of the participants in communication (Halliday, 2002). We use language to interact with people for some purposes: we may want to influence their attitudes or behavior, or to provide information that they do not know, or to explain our own attitudes or behavior, or to get them to take some actions, and so on (Thompson 2000, Simon, 1997). Halliday pointed out that the interpersonal meaning can be expressed by mood, modality and key. Later, he added pronoun system, attitudinal modifier and rhythmic features of words. Eggins (2004) found that the link between language systems and the choice made by the speaker in the exchange enable us to see speakers making interpersonal meaning. In a cover letter, to lead the reader attach more importance to your resume and you is the initial purpose of every writer. So this paper explores how the job-seekers, namely writers, fulfill interpersonal meaning during the interaction in terms of mood, modal words and so forth. 2.2 Mood 2.2.1 Interactivity Interpersonal meanings focus on the interactivity of the language, and concern the ways in which we act upon one another through language. This means that each text has a relationship between providers of information and recipients of information. The writer, namely addresser can decide his own positioning in communication with a reader, namely addressee. As a result, it can be said that the addresser can produce various levels of interactivity by the choice of discourse, as well as vocabulary in the various social contexts. That is, ”politeness, formality, intimacy, the power relationship between speaker and listener and the degree that the speaker indicated willingness to negotiate the demand (White, 2000) can be created variously. 2.2.2 Clause types In the declaratives, the information is provided from the writer to a reader. The former is a provider of information and the latter is a recipient of information. But in the interrogatives, we can see the opposite movement of information. The writer expects to receive an answer from a reader. This shows that the former is a recipient of information, and the latter is a (potential) provider of information. In the imperatives, the writer demands the information (or goods services, according to Halliday) to a reader. the former is a recipient of information, and the latter is a provider of information/service. In term of the cover letter, the addresser need motivate the addressee to highlight his capacity in a logical manner, raising his interest to know more, as well as believing his words not to be blank and flatulent. That is, addresser is giving the information about himself and promoting himself in an objective manner. Meanwhile, he should establish the relationship on an equal basis. Therefore, the clauses are declarative and imperative rather than interrogative or exclamatory. 2.3 Value of modality 2.3 theoretical foundations According to Halliday (2004, p. 356), modality refers to the area of meaning that lies between yes and no----the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity. Eggins (1994, p. 179) claims that modality refers to how a language user can intrude on his/her message, expressing attitudes and judgments of various kinds. Therefore, modality is a major exponent of the interpersonal function of language. Modality can be classified into modalization and modulation according to the exchange of information and the exchange of goods or service. If the commodity being exchanged is information, the modality relates to how valid the information is in terms of probability (how likely it is to be true) or usuality (how frequently it is true). There are some basic points on the probability scale: possible/probable/certain and some basic points on the usuality scale: sometimes/often/always. They relates to how confident the speaker can be in the eventual success of the exchange. In commands it is about to which degree the other person can carry out the command (the scale for the demand goods or services consists of permissible/advisable/obligatory). In offers it is about to which degree the speaker can fulfill the offer (the speaker may signal: ability/willingness/determination). In a cover letter, addresser just use information to sold himself as a product or service. we may scrutinize the modal verbal operators to see how confident and honest is the writer. 2.3.2 modal verbal operators Different modal verbal operators may convey different values. For example, The high value of inclination is often realized through must/ought to/be determined, the median vale through will/be to/be keen and the low value through can/might/be willing. Similarly, the metaphorical representations of modality can also be classified in the same hierarchy of value in terms of probability, such as I believe (high), I think (median) and I guess(low). The central paragraph of the cover letter is unique for each person, but the premise is the same: sell yourself. We want to describe how you fulfill the job#8217;s requirements by expanding on what we have talked about in your resume or providing additional information not on the resume. We can use words of high value in the central part by transform using phrases such as, ”I hope or wish...” and ”would or could” into a ”I look forward to...” or ”I will.... ”. However, in the major part, modal auxiliaries with median value should be preferred than those with igh values as modal auxiliaries with median value can show the applicant#8217;s politeness and the correspondence#8217;s formality. 2.4 Tense Tense is a kind of syntactic structure that constructs the relationship between beginning time ”now” of the discourse and the time when one thing happed. Klein (1994) points out that expressing time is the secondary function of tense. The more important functions are to mark the different types of discourse, distinguish the background and foreground materials, or label the focus and features. In order to figure out how tense system affects in realizing the interpersonal meaning,we are going to compare the tense in the paradigm Example 2.5 personal pronouns In English grammar, a personal pronoun refers to a particular person, group, or thing. Personal pronouns are organized of three parts: (1) First person: I, me, we, us. (2) Second person: you. (3) Third person: she, he, it, they, them, her, him. Personal pronouns can be used to realize the interpersonal function. Personal system is made up of personal pronouns, which is part of the reference system. And reference is often used in the communication between the people. Pronoun choice is the way that the speaker expresses both his own presence, the presence of others, and the relationship that he keeps with others. We may find that there is barely the second personal pronoun because it is used to have more interaction with the reader and make them concentrate on the content, however, there is no need in a cv for they are short and lack of definite object. For the third personal pronoun ”they” and ”it”, their frequency in the speeches is relatively low. The writer adopts the third personal pronoun to make his letter sound more objective and convincible. As for the first personal pronoun, our Chinese may deliberately bury it or sometimes replace it with self-abasing terms. However , there is no such tendency in these ten letters.