Fostering Stance-Taking as a Sustainable Goal in Developing EFL Students’ Academic Writing Skills: Exploring the Effects of Explicit Instruction on Academic Writing Skills and Stance Deployment

Abstract

Effective stance-taking is considered as a crucial skill for successful academic writing and sustainable development of writing scholarship. However, student writers often encounter difficulties in this aspect. Scholars have thus called for explicit instruction to develop students’ academic writing ability as a sustainable goal. Learning stance-taking is a particularly relevant area of intensive interest among writing scholars. Yet, few empirical studies have been conducted to examine its effectiveness on students’ academic writing quality and stance deployment. To fill this gap, a quasi-experimental research was conducted with 46 undergraduate students in a Chinese university, who were randomly assigned to two conditions: a treatment group and a comparison group. The treatment group received an eight-week explicit stance instruction, while the comparison group received curriculum-based writing instruction at the same time. Academic texts were collected both prior to and after the period of intervention. Results revealed that the treatment group outperformed the comparison group in the post-test in terms of academic writing quality and stance performance. Their writing also exhibited changes in the frequencies of an array of stance types deployed (e.g., proclaim: pronounce, proclaim: endorse, entertain, attribute), indicating their enhanced understanding of stance and improved competence of mitigation and integrating external voices for better academic writing. Implications for writing instruction are discussed.

Understanding the Sustainable Growth of EFL Students’ Writing Skills: Differences between Novice and Expert Writers in Their Use of Lexical Bundles in Academic Writing

“…Extensive reading and studying the linguistic choice of expert writers can offer student writers rich resources to construct theses writing. Empirical studies have shown that explicit instruction could sustainably benefit student writers' writing quality [42]. The expert bundles could be incorporated into writing lessons that might help students promote their expression in a more disciplinarily accepted way.…”

“…Type Token SWC the ways in which *** − (12), the fact that the (11), the previous studies on (11), the relationship between the (11) 4 45 EWC the ways in which (42), the extent to which (23), the fact that the (21), the relationship between the (13) 4 99…”

Sustainable Development of EFL Learners’ Research Writing Competence and Their Identity Construction: Chinese Novice Writer-Researchers’ Metadiscourse Use in English Research Articles

“…Hyland found that EFL writers had problems with both the type and range of metadiscourse markers, affecting the persuasive effect of their argument [4]. Specifically, EFL student writers were less strategic in stance-taking for establishing persuasive argumentation [36]. Zhang and Zhan suggested that the EFL learners' voice development may be influenced by dynamic changes in culture, language, and education in a globalized society [37].…”

“…Despite the existence of disciplinary conventions, it is provincial to regard writer identity as fixed. Instead, writer identity is constantly changing due to the reality of heteroglossia, reflected by the dynamic, dialogic interactions between writers, texts, and the prospective audience [36]. Writer identity is not mono-faceted either, for different aspects of identity are constructed simultaneously in a text through lexico-grammatical choice [31].…”

“…By using Non-integral Evidentials instead of Integral ones, the CNWs tended to "adopt a non-committal stance that acknowledges or distances themselves from cited sources" [46]. This could be attributed to the CNWs' "self-perceived peripheral status in the academic discipline, or their traditional Chinese values of collectivism" [36] (p. 15).…”