Pre-university Students’ Voice Construction in Argumentative Essays

Abstract

This article examines how writer’s voice is constructed in argumentative essays written at the pre-university level. The study focusses on the student writers’ control over evaluative resources that influence the realization of voice in the high-scoring and low-scoring scripts. Using the APPRAISAL system in Systemic Functional Linguistics, the study shows how voice is construed through APPRAISAL theory in the high-scoring and low-scoring general paper essays, respectively. The differences between the two categories of essays can be seen in the application of ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE, and GRADUATION resources. Findings indicated that the high scoring essays used richer ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE resources to accomplish more mature and sophisticated argumentative voices. These opportunities to make full use of the APPRAISAL resources were missed by the low-scoring students in their argumentative writing. The findings are pedagogically useful for writing teachers who find the notion of voice too abstract to teach but accept its significance in producing a good essay.

Keywords

Academic writing APPRAISAL theory pre-university students voice construction argumentative essays

Introduction

Voice may be seen as a hallmark of good essays, in particular, General Paper (GP) argumentative essays in the Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (GCE A Level) Examination. However, voice in academic writing is seldom taught in the classroom (O’Hallaron and Schleppegrell, 2016). It is because GP teachers, who are frequently hard-pressed for time to complete their syllabus or marking, have been relegating the teaching of voice to the sideline in favour of teaching other more ‘tangible’ aspects such as the organizational sequences in genres. Few studies have been conducted to investigate written voice in compulsory English Language argumentative essays at the pre-university level. The existing literature of voice in academic writing tends to focus on specialized subject essays such as history and geography essays (e.g. Coffin, 2006; Derewianka, 2007; Wu, 2006), or the literary aspect and cultural construct of voice, in mass audience texts or academic texts at the university level (Hanauer, 2015; Matsuda and Tardy, 2007). Our study focusses on how pre-university student writers are able to use evaluative resources (i.e. resources in the language for expressing judgment and attitudes) to construct their authorial presence as writers in GP argumentative essays. Specifically, we adopted the APPRAISAL system to investigate how competent or less competent pre-university student writers use evaluative resources to realize the written voice. The APPRAISAL framework is a development in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL scholars (Martin and Rose, 2007; Martin and White, 2005) propose the framework to deal with ‘how attitudes are negotiated in the text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned’ (Martin and Rose, 2007: 25).

The present study adds knowledge to our current limited understanding of how high- and low-scoring pre-university students negotiate with other voices in their texts and their readers, who include teachers and/or examiners. The findings improve our understanding of pre-university students’ learning to construct voice in argumentative writing, and generate useful implications about how such learning can be facilitated and supported in writing classrooms in both L1 and L2 contexts.

Literature Review

Prior studies (Barton, 1993; Lancaster, 2014; North, 2005; Soliday, 2004) have identified differences between high- and low-scoring university student writers in terms of the construction of interpersonal meanings and conceptualization of voice. For example, Barton (1993) noted that high-scoring students were more skillful in problematizing others’ views, developing counter-arguments, and constructing a credible persona in two essays – one was a point of view essay that was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the other was an essay written for a university writing proficiency requirement. In writing advanced argumentative essays, which requires giving recommendations on evidence-based policy in the field of economics, Lancaster (2014: 41) found that high-scoring students performed better than low-scoring students in constructing a novice academic stance in writing, and in striving to build ‘a critically discerning reader in the text’. Such an awareness of the importance of establishing an interpersonal dimension in writing is also evident in the high-scoring students, who used interpersonal orienting themes to comment on the propositions/assertions in argumentative essays from a history of science course, compared with the low-scoring students, who seemed to make more use of assertions without thematizing other writers (North, 2005). The results of Soliday’s (2004) study suggested that in order to receive the highest marks, students in a general anthropology course needed to skilfully express the relationship between writer’s stance, evidence, and reader expectations in their essays. The essays required the writers to make a comparison of four fields of anthropology (i.e. linguistics, sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, or physical anthropology) and two cultures.

The APPRAISAL Theoretical Framework

We use APPRAISAL because it is a useful theoretical framework for helping us to understand and analyse voice in the argumentative essays. It is important to note that the APPRAISAL framework is situated at the discourse semantics level to convey ‘meaning beyond the clause’ (Martin and White, 2005). One may consider the APPRAISAL framework a nexus between the social context and the lexicogrammar.

The APPRAISAL system comprises ATTITUDE, GRADUATION, and ENGAGEMENT (Martin and Rose, 2007), each of which further consists of other subcategories. ATTITUDE, which concerns feelings construed in texts, consists of the subcategories of AFFECT, APPRECIATION, and JUDGEMENT. AFFECT involves positive or negative emotions that we have towards phenomena. APPRECIATION concerns the attitude towards things such as objects, issues, or events. JUDGMENT is about the evaluation of the behaviour of people and entities. The APPRAISAL system examines the intensity of these feelings through the category of GRADUATION, where attitudinal meanings are up-scaled or down-scaled. GRADUATION ‘increases or decreases the intensity of these evaluations’ (Miller et al., 2014: 108). ENGAGEMENT has to do with the source of the evaluations and how readers are aligned. Within the category of ENGAGEMENT, there are subcategories of monogloss (single-voiced) and heterogloss (multiple-voiced). Within the subcategory of heterogloss, there are further subcategories such as projection (what people say or think), modality (how usual, probable, or obligatory), and concession (counter expectancy). Because of fine nuances, the APPRAISAL system can be quite sophisticated and complex. The APPRAISAL framework has been developed in SFL as a way to extend earlier work on mood and modality. Other resources such as ENTERTAIN are broadly connected to past studies of modality and hedging. The key terms used in the APPRAISAL framework are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

The Key Terms Used in the APPRAISAL Framework (Martin and White, 2005).

Terms	Meaning	Examples
I. ENGAGEMENT
ENDORSE	‘propositions sourced to external sources are construed by the authorial voice as correct, valid, undeniable or otherwise maximally warrantable’ (p. 126).	prove, point out, demonstrate, find, show.
PRONOUNCE	‘involves authorial emphases or explicit authorial interventions or interpolations’ (p. 127).	in fact, I contend, the truth is, indeed, I therefore propose.
COUNTER	‘represents the current proposition as replacing or supplanting, and thereby “countering”, a proposition which would have been expected in its place’ (p. 120).	yet, on the other hand, although, but, however, even, surprisingly, interestingly.
DENY	‘introduces the alternative positive position into the dialogue, and hence acknowledging it, so as to reject it’ (p. 118).	no, not, did not, never.
CONCUR	‘announces the addresser as agreeing with, or having the same knowledge as, some projected dialogic partner’ (p. 122).	certainly, of course, obviously, not surprisingly.
ENTERTAIN	‘authorial voice indicates that its position is but one of a number of possible positions’ (p. 104).	may, could, must, perhaps, it is possible, it seems, it appears, I think, I believe, if.
ATTRIBUTE	‘disassociates the proposition from the text’s internal authorial voice by attributing it to some external source’ (p. 111).	report, suggest, belief, assertion, say, think, announce.
II. ATTITUDE
APPRECIATION	is about ‘our evaluation of things’ (p. 56).	I consider it beautiful.
JUDGMENT	‘is concerned with resources for assessing behaviour according to various normative principles’ (p. 35).	It was silly of them to do that.
AFFECT	‘deals with resources for construing emotional reactions’ (p. 35).	anger, horror, worry.
III. GRADUATION
FORCE: RAISE	‘how strong the feeling is’ (p. 37).	so touchy, most dangerous, quite clinical.
FORCE: LOWER	‘how weak the feeling is’ (p. 37).	A little upset, somewhat upset.

At the elementary level, Derewianka (2007) observed that recount essays written by children tended to apply more AFFECT components of the APPRAISAL framework compared with other types of essays. That is to say, the children would often make use of emotive language to construct their written voice. In higher education, in the field of history, for example, voice is realized through the inclusion of other voices as a means of referencing, which is conventional in a research paper (Coffin, 2006). Wu (2006) found that high-rated versus low-rated scripts written by first year Geography undergraduate students can be partly explained by the students’ skilful or unskilful application of evaluative resources from the APPRAISAL framework. However, the literature appears scant on how pre-university students present their voice in academic writing. Coffin (2006) was one of the relatively few studies that examined writer’s voice in high school settings. Coffin’s study shows that APPRAISAL theory can explain the linguistic distribution of values and judgements, and the corresponding creation of the recorder, emoter, and appraiser voices in writing history essays.

The Current Study

The current study was undertaken to investigate the differences between high-scoring students (score of 35/50 or higher) and low-scoring students (score of 22/50 or lower) in constructing written voice in the GP argumentative essays. The study answers the following research questions:

How do high-scoring students construct written voice in the GP argumentative essays?

How do low-scoring students construct written voice in the GP argumentative essays?

Method

Participants

The junior college taking part in this study, which we refer to as junior college A (JC A), is a well-known junior college in Singapore, which takes in students aged 16–17 years-old with generally above-average academic performance in the Cambridge General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O Level) examinations. The GCE O Level is taken at the end of a student’s four or five year secondary school education, and the junior college is the equivalent of senior high school in the United States. Convenience sampling was adopted in this study, mainly through contacting teachers working in JC A. Three classes of students, of varying academic performance and taking GP in JC A, were chosen for the study. The three classes of students were all Year 1 (i.e. JC1 classes in a two year junior college programme), banded as stronger, average, and weaker ability students, respectively. The banding is according to the students’ Cambridge General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O Level) scores needed for entry into junior college. English is the designated first language in Singapore, and all the classes in this study used English as the medium of instruction. Each class had between 21 and 26 students. Outside class and at home, students converse either in their mother tongue (Chinese, Malay, or Tamil) or Singapore colloquial English (Hornberger and Vaish, 2009).

All the participants in the study were briefed about the nature of the study and had volunteered to be involved in the study by giving their written informed consent. Since students were younger than 21 years of age, consent was also sought from their parents/guardians. In accordance with ethical guidelines, the identities of the school, teachers, and students in this study were kept strictly confidential. Hence, a combination of numerals and/or letters was used to refer to the students’ scripts, their classes, and the GP teachers.

Materials

There are two papers for the GCE A Level Examination. Paper 1 and Paper 2 each carry 50% of the GP. For Paper 1, students select one out of 12 essay questions to answer. They are expected to write about 500–800 words for the essay. GP essay topics, involving issues of local interest and global concern, range from history, culture, economics, politics, philosophy, society, to technology. The essay prompts are open-ended and controversial to elicit different responses from the students. In terms of the assessment of the essay, 60% is related to content and 40% to language use. In our study, we focussed soley on Paper 1 as it concerns argumentative writing. It tests students’ ability to maintain an argument and use examples to support that argument. Examples of essay prompts include the following:

Consider the view that education is no longer necessary for success.

‘The arts are more than just a form of entertainment’. To what extent is this true?

Discuss the view that too much faith has been placed on examinations in society.

A total of 67 GP essay scripts were collected for the JC1 GP Common Examination (i.e. mock examination taken at the end of the first JC year for the school’s internal grading) held in August 2013. Of the 67 GP essay scripts, 11 scripts from two extreme ends of the grade bands – grade A high-scoring and grade S low-scoring scripts – were gathered for analysis. Since there were no scripts falling under grade U, grade S was selected instead. In the mock examination, all the JC1 GP classes in JC A sat for the full GP papers (i.e. both the essay paper and comprehension paper). For the GP essay paper, students were given 90 minutes to complete it in an examination setting. In total there were three scripts collected from the A-grade band for the high-scoring scripts and eight scripts from the S-grade band for the low-scoring GP scripts. We gathered three A grade scripts in the mock examination. This reflected the reality that very few students got a distinction in the essay component of the GP. The same batch of GP scripts were marked by the same marker, who possessed a Master’s degree in Applied English Linguistics. Table 2 illustrates the distribution of grades for all the three classes. The proficiency levels of the students were reflected in their GP essays.

Table 2.

Distribution of Grades Across the Three Classes.

Classes	Grades							Scripts per Class
Classes	A	B	C	D	E	S	U	Scripts per Class
1A	0	1	8	8	2	2	0	21
1B	0	3	7	9	5	2	0	26
1C	3	4	3	6	0	4	0	20
Total	3	8	18	23	7	8	0	67

This research is a small-scale exploratory study. In existing research, a sizeable number of studies already take a corpus-based approach such as using a concordance software like Wordsmith, which examines how voice is associated with specific lexicogrammar, albeit in various other genres or contexts. While these corpus-based studies are able to generalize about the linguistic manifestation of voice, there should be greater appreciation of language as a meaning-making resource from which choices are made. APPRAISAL offers a framework for the patterns of interpersonal meaning choices in a text to be elucidated. This small-scale study is an investigation of the ‘logogenesis’ of discourse (Martin and White, 2005), i.e. the unfolding of a text (in this case, GP argumentative essays). Therefore, our study allows a more in-depth analysis of instances of GP argumentative essays, compared to a corpus-based approach, which is more appropriate for the examination of a few key lexicogrammatical items across many texts (Miller et al., 2014).

Data Analysis

Coding ENGAGEMENT Resources

The scripts were coded for ENGAGEMENT resources in terms of whether locutions are dialogically expansive or dialogically contractive. Dialogically expansive locutions open up space for alternative positions, while dialogically contractive ones narrow down the dialogic space. Under the dialogically expansive category, there are options called ENTERTAIN and ATTRIBUTE. ENTERTAIN options are signaled by locutions that demonstrate the authorial voice as one of a number of value positions, thereby expanding dialogic space for alternatives, for instance, modal verbs and modal adjuncts. ATTRIBUTE is different from ENTERTAIN moves in that a proposition is sourced to an external party by the authorial voice through the use of verbal or mental processes or nominalizations. There are two categories subsumed under ATTRIBUTE, namely ACKNOWLEDGE moves and DISTANCE moves. In ACKNOWLEDGE moves, the authorial voice remains neutral to the proposition (e.g. ‘some people may argue’). DISTANCE moves include the use of formulations that distance the authorial voice from the attributed source.

Dialogically contractive options include DISCLAIM moves and PROCLAIM moves. A DENY move includes examples such as ‘the same cannot be said in its role today’ (HSGP1), and COUNTER moves such as ‘on the other hand, it is illogical’ (LSGP1). DISCLAIM moves seek to reject or supplant a proposition and include a DENY move, which is a negation and counter formulation. PROCLAIM moves include a PRONOUNCE move where there is explicit authorial interpolations or emphases (e.g. ‘I contend, indeed’). PROCLAIM moves involve the authorial voice intervening to restrict the scope of alternatives through PRONOUNCE, ENDORSE, and CONCUR moves (see Table 3 for examples of moves/codes).

Table 3.

Examples of ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE and GRADUATION Moves Found in High-scoring GP Essays.

	HSGP1	HSGP2	HSGP3
ENGAGEMENT
PROCLAIM: ENDORSE	… It has been seen in many developed countries such as the USA, Britain and Singapore, that people who are more successful generally are degree-holders…	… Surveys of primary and secondary school students show that 76% students feel that the idea of independent learning is tempting…	… Such genre perfectly illustrates that art is a form of entertainment.
PROCLAIM: PRONOUNCE	It has become clear that even without education, people are able to progress in life…	Indeed, education hardly provides us with the platform to practise what we learn in pragmatic and realistic ways.	It is indeed true that the arts are more than just a mere form of entertainment.
DISCLAIM: COUNTER	Education may have succeeded in enlightening them, but at imparting values such as integrity, modesty… education has failed in that role.	… Education’s necessity to succeed does not diminish but in fact, becomes ever more important.	… Art should be highly fantastical and entertaining, not be marred with realism, and should be just taken as it is, but cultural and societal context will always come into play while creating and viewing a piece of art, regardless of whether viewers like it or not.
CONCEDE + COUNTER	While education may have been a necessary path of people who succeed in life to take, it is clear that its role in social advancement has been reduced harshly.	… While formal education may be less important now and informal education is needed, education is still definitely not the only thing necessary for success.	Viewers and audience just want to be entertained by interesting characters or feel relaxed without having to think too much However, every piece of art can be dissected, taken apart and analysed, even the most seemingly shallow superhero movie or romantic comedy.
ENTERTAIN: MODALITY	… This may seem to conclude that education remains relevant in today’s society…	Students may choose to study law in polytechnics or study in a junior college before proceeding to a university for a degree.	The arts can be a medium through which awareness is raised on certain issues.
ATTRIBUTE: ACKNOWLEDGE	Some people may argue that education is still a relevant concept…	… Some will argue that there are other ways to learn these things to succeed.	Some believe that art should be highly fantastical and entertaining
ATTITUDE
APPRECIATION	Education is something people cannot go without.	… Education is useful and actually necessary for a person to succeed…	The arts are a reflection of our society, our concerns, our worries and our aspirations…
JUDGEMENT	… [Students] are able to harness that knowledge and target it towards improving the nation’s economy and well-being.	Education is necessary for a person to attain the required knowledge and skills to succeed in different fields of the society.	Artists also can present a fresh perspective on a hotly debated issue which can give people new lens to view an old issue.
GRADUATION
FORCE: RAISE	The reality is that education’s role towards success has been greatly diminished…	… An increasing number of teens are beginning to have more confidence in succeeding even without education.	These two plays would be the most prominent works of his due to the subject matter and the relevancy of it…

Modifications to the Traditional ENGAGEMENT Typology

In the course of analysing the GP essays, instances of monogloss are common, especially when students used topic sentences to support their theses. Such monoglossic assertions are substantiated with explanations, as is expected in an argumentative genre, where student-writers have to convince the reader with reason. In view of this observation, this study proposes another category, a justification move, which was suggested by White (2003). Although White (2003) did not classify a justification move as either dialogically contractive or expansive, from the analysis of GP essays, it appears that monoglossic explanations and dialogically contractive examples convince the reader of the validity of a particular position.

In the analysis of expressions, such as I believe, I agree, and definitely, found in GP essays, the expressions are considered PROCLAIM: PRONOUNCE moves because the students are trying to emphasize their stand through personal pronouns or modality. Therefore, although Martin and White (2005) argue that these expressions may be classified as ENTERTAIN moves in that they are dialogically expansive in acknowledging alternatives, in the context of GP essays in which students are expected to assert their stance, such expressions are for the most part dialogically contractive in that they narrow down available viewpoints and present the authorial voice as privileging one viewpoint above the others.

Coding ATTITUDE and GRADUATION Resources

ATTITUDE resources comprise AFFECT, JUDGEMENT, and APPRECIATION moves. An AFFECT move (coded as ‘affect’) concerns emotions and feelings of the authorial voice or external parties, which can be further sub-divided into feelings of happiness/unhappiness, security/insecurity, and satisfaction/dissatisfaction. A JUDGEMENT move (coded as ‘judge’) refers to attitude towards behaviour that is praiseworthy or condemnable, and has to do with normality (how special one is), capacity (how capable one is), tenacity (how dependable one is), veracity (how honest one is), and propriety (how ethical one is). An APPRECIATION move (coded as ‘app’) refers to one’s evaluations of things such as our reaction to them (how attention-grabbing or satisfactory they are to us), their composition (how balanced or complex they are), and their value (how worthwhile they are).

For GRADUATION, the categories of FOCUS and FORCE are coded. A FOCUS move concerns the blurring or sharpening of boundaries, so that values will be coded as soften or sharpen. For example, ‘a sense of humour is merely just being able to laugh at jokes easily and probably having to understand them’ (LSGP4) is coded as FOCUS: SHARPEN, because it merely suggests the circumscribed effect of humour. By contrast, a FORCE move describes intensification and quantification, which are coded as raising or lowering in most cases.

The coding of the scripts was done by the authors of this article. The first rater has a PhD in Linguistics and the second rater has a Master’s Degree in Applied English Linguistics. Both raters were familiar with coding using the APPRAISAL theoretical framework. The inter-rater reliability was 0.94. Both of the authors/raters discussed and resolved disagreements until they reached a consensus. Raw frequencies of the coded resources were normalized per 1000 words in order to control any effects that different lengths of the essays might have on the results. The normalized frequencies were then summarized to depict the patterns of the ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE, and GRADUATION resources in the essays.

Results

High-Performers Deployed ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE, and GRADUATION Resources

The three high-scoring essays on average used nearly 1.5 times as many ENGAGEMENT resources as the eight low-scoring essays. On average, the high-performers used nearly 1.2 times as many ATTITUDE resources.This suggests that the high-performers accomplished more sophisticated voices in their essays through the ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE moves. Table 3 illustrates examples of the ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE, and GRADUATION moves found in the high-scoring essays.

Using ENGAGEMENT Resources to Manage Alternative Viewpoints and Sustain a Consistent Position

The high-scoring authors used ENGAGEMENT resources, namely CONCEDE + COUNTER moves, in maintaining the central argument and managing alternative viewpoints. Specifically, the high-scoring authors effectively applied CONCEDE + COUNTER to manage different views and maintain the central argument throughout the entire essay. The authors of HSGP2 and HSGP3 followed the same patterns as HPSG 1 (i.e. a prototypical high-scoring essay). The author of HSGP1 is clear in stating his stand, as indicated in (1), which is the final sentence of the first paragraph of the HSGP1 text:

The reality is that education’s role towards success has been greatly diminished, thus it is no longer necessary for success (HSGP1).

This student also appropriately uses the CONCEDE + COUNTER move in (2).

While education may have been a necessary path of people who succeed in life to take, it is clear that its role in social advancement has been reduced harshly (HSGP1).

The CONCEDE + COUNTER moves are used when ‘the writer anticipates disagreement on the part of the reader’ (Martin and White, 2005: 126), with a purpose of ‘acknowledging the reader’s contrary viewpoint … and showing that the usual or expected implications do not arise from the conceded proposition’ (Martin and White, 2005: 125–26). In (2), the author anticipates a reader’s viewpoint that may contradict the central argument, by conceding that education may be necessary when it comes to success in life, but straightaway counters that viewpoint by stating that education plays a limited role in facilitating advancement in social status, which is consistent with the central argument.

The author of HSGP1 makes use of the pattern of assertion + example + PROCLAIM: ENDORSE (Miller et al., 2014) to develop and strengthen the argument, as shown in (3).

(3) Education is necessary as far as receiving paper qualifications, but its role as a means to social advancement is becoming increasingly obsolete [assertion]… Fewer people in the younger generation in Singapore believe that getting a degree is actually necessary to start a successful business, as seen from the poll results of youths in the age group 15–29 [example]… the fact that they consider completing their education at all unnecessary to have successful business careers, only serves to prove that [proclaim: endorse] education no longer carries the same air of importance that it once did towards building a successful career (HSGP1).

In (3), the author of HSGP1 begins by using a counter-expectancy move (‘Education is…, but…’) to re-state the assertion that the role of education in contributing to social advancement (success in layman’s terms) is becoming obsolete. This is the original assertion framed as a CONCEDE + COUNTER move. The assertion is consistent with the central argument, i.e. that education is no longer necessary for success. Then, the student incorporates an example of poll results of youths with regard to getting a degree and starting a business to support the central argument. The author engages the example (i.e. ‘the poll results’) by using the PROCLAIM: ENDORSE move (prove that) to develop his argument and demonstrate an authorial voice in the writing. The HSGP1 author also uses PROCLAIM: PRONOUNCE moves to emphasize his stand through personal pronouns or modality. He uses PROCLAIM: PRONOUNCE in Paragraph 2 (e.g. ‘we must also remember that…’), Paragraph 4 (e.g. ‘Singapore younger generation has indeed forgotten…’), and Paragraph 6 (conclusion) (e.g. ‘it is clear that…’).

Using ATTITUDE Resources to Express the Evaluation of the Essay Topic

The authors of the HSGP scripts tend to use more ATTITUDE resources than LSGP scripts. They are able to clearly express their evaluation of the GP topic by drawing on ATTITUDE resources, namely APPRECIATION and JUDGMENT, as shown in (4) and (5), respectively.

(4) Education, especially in the primary and secondary level, includes subjects such as Science and Math into the curriculum, which encourages children to be narrow-minded, rather than to seek other solution. This quality becomes detrimental (- app: value of education) to them as they leave the classroom and enter the workforce (HSGP1).

(5) People judge and are judged based on one’s ability to innovate (+ judge: capacity) and think out of the box (+ judge: capacity) (HSGP1).

In (4), we see a negative APPRECIATION of education as an institution that is unable to train students in seeking alternative solutions and that is out of touch with reality. This is followed by (5), in which a positive JUDGEMENT has been applied to highlight the traits of innovation and the ability to think out of the box as prerequisites for success. As indicated in (4) and (5), the HSGP1 author’s effective use of JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION resources creates a stronger sense of the student’s authorial voice. Such authorial visibility is vital in GP, which places a premium on personal voice.

Using GRADUATION Resources to Strengthen the Argument

In terms of GRADUATION resources, their use appears to be comparatively more sporadic and less distinctive even in the high-scoring scripts, compared to the other two sub-systems of ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE. Nonetheless, GRADUATION plays a role in strengthening the argument in the high-scoring scripts.

(6) Education’s role towards success has been greatly (force: raise) diminished, thus it is no longer necessary for success (HSGP1).

In (6), that the role of education has played a less important role in contributing to success nowadays is amplified by the adverb of degree ‘greatly’. This may suggest that the author of HSGP1 has already assessed the other viewpoints. The student also reinforces the central argument that education is no longer necessary for success.

Low-Scoring Essays Missed Opportunities to Encode ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE Resources

As we coded the essays, we noticed a striking difference between the frequencies of high-performers’ and low-performers’ deployment of ATTITUDE and ENGAGEMENT moves. In particular, HSGP1 used nearly three times as many ATTITUDE moves as LSGP 3. This observation suggests that LSGP3 may have missed opportunities to project ATTITUDE resources into the text, as shown in (7).

(7) … Not everyone in the world is able to leave education, and bend on becoming a professional gamer or being the creator of a new social media. This leaves the only other opportunity for a person to be successful, which is to get a good education and slowly move up the ranks of society in the new future… (LSGP3).

In (7), towards the end of the text, the LSGP3 author could have exploited the deployment of ATTITUDE resources. He could have included a JUDGEMENT move, such as ‘Education is necessary for a person to attain the required knowledge and skills to succeed in different fields of the society’.

As shown in (8), the author of LSGP2 is reviewing the viewpoint of others (i.e. many people believe that; parents insist that…). However, it was never made clear in the essay whether this was the writer’s own perspective or ‘voice’, or that the writer did not contract dialogic space authoritatively.

(8) Many people in our society also believe that the way to a successful life is by doing well in examinations. Parents insist that their children study hard, drill them with the various concepts of each subject, and purchase ten year series’ books for their children to practise each subject. This is all done in order that the child can do well at the national examinations and get good results in order to advance to the tertiary level of education (LSGP 2).

Item 8 is an example of the low-scoring essays being too expansive and therefore missing the opportunity to drive their perspectives forward. Tang (2009) has made a similar point about student writers allowing their voices to be ‘drowned out’ by the voices of others. There is similarly a problem with LSGP 2’s text in terms of the projection of the authorial voice.

Discussion

Our findings indicate that both the high-scoring students and low-scoring students made use of ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE, and GRADUATION resources to help them develop arguments in their essays. Comparatively, however, the high-scoring essays, on average, used richer ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE resources to accomplish more mature and sophisticated argumentative voices. These opportunities to make full use of the APPRAISAL resources were comparatively missed by the low-scoring students in their argumentative writing.

Pre-university students have to state their viewpoint, and anticipate as well as counter alternative viewpoints in their GP essays. The ENGAGEMENT moves enable students to dialogically contract the negotiation space to privilege one viewpoint over others, or dialogically expand the negotiation space to signal to the reader that other perspectives are also valued in GP essays and are up for discussion. Cambridge examination markers have repeatedly stressed the importance of having authorial voice in GP essays to create a good first impression. This good first impression can be accomplished through the judicious application of ENGAGEMENT moves to present the issues under contention and to bring in the students’ own points of view. The present study adds to this literature through examination of the patterns of ENGAGEMENT resources that are valued in pre-university argumentative writing.

The application of ENGAGEMENT resources observed in high-scoring GP scripts corresponds with the findings of Wu’s (2006) APPRAISAL study of successful problematization in the introductory paragraphs of high-rated undergraduate Geography essays. Unlike specialized undergraduate essays, the purpose of a pre-university GP essay is often to persuade and convince the reader through an evaluation of diverse perspectives and a justifiable conclusion without the use of secondary sources. Such an essay should include ENGAGEMENT resources to acknowledge other viewpoints while arguing for one’s own viewpoint. Such an inclusive stance may contribute to a competent student-writer voice. Our findings are consistent with those of Miller et al., (2014) and Ryshina-Pankova (2014) that it is important to apply the resources strategically so as to strengthen the central argument and establish the authorial voice clearly.

We see that there is a distinction between how ENGAGEMENT resources have been employed in high-scoring GP essays versus other essays in higher education. As Hood (2004) pointed out, ATTRIBUTE moves are less frequently employed in GP essays. If used, they are mostly sourced to non-specific or general sources. In GP essays, for example, an ATTRIBUTE: ACKNOWLEDGE move such as ‘some people may argue’ does not require an explicit source that is either foregrounded in the clause or is a non-integral citation. GP essays are meant to let students express their personal views of the world to the layperson, which does not require acknowledgement of secondary sources. On the other hand, such acknowledgment is typically expected in writing in higher education settings.

Conclusion

This study makes an original contribution to the field of academic writing. It contributes to concretizing the notion of written voice in GP essays, and provides writing teachers with a theoretical framework to teach voice. This study has shed light on disambiguating the notion of voice in argumentative essays to make the pedagogy of voice visible. While there is a resurgence of interest in focussing on interpretation of open-ended GP essay questions and writing skills, much can still be done in addressing the ambiguity of voice in GP argumentative essays. ENGAGEMENT resources play an important role in presenting different viewpoints while privileging one particular viewpoint over the others. Writing GP essays requires clear foregrounding of the student-writer’s views and the consideration of alternative views for a general audience, rather than the audience of a specialized academic discourse community. Writing teachers and students should note that it is important to apply more resources and use them effectively so as to help strengthen the central argument and establish the authorial voice (Lancaster, 2014; Lee and Deakin, 2016).

At the practical level, English Language teachers should explicitly teach ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDE, and GRADUATION resources in a writing classroom. They can make use of two essays (e.g. one high-scoring and one low-scoring) with qualitatively different voices to show how the three subsystems of APPRAISAL cooperate in a single text to form authorial voice. Writing teachers can jumble the order of text segments, and ask students to work in pairs to re-arrange the segments to their correct sequence. By doing this activity, students can become familiar with the pattern of central argument + examples + endorse that is crucial in an essay. In addition, students often learn to construct an essay through the use of ENGAGEMENT resources (Lee and Deakin, 2016). Students should be taught the evaluative functions of reporting verbs (Thompson and Ye, 1991), in order to effectively manage ENGAGEMENT resources. In terms of ATTITUDE and GRADUATION resources, students may be advised against the use of AFFECT, but rather focus on JUDGEMENT and APPRECIATION resources, which are commonly expected in argumentative essays.

Whereas referencing secondary sources is not required in pre-university argumentative essays, writing teachers should consider teaching students how to dissociate their authorial voice from opposing viewpoints with the use of hedging words such as it may seem, perhaps, it appears, or it has been claimed. This is related to the ENGAGEMENT resource in APPRAISAL theory; the use of modal verbs suggests that the dialogic space is open for negotiation (Martin and White, 2005). Modal verbs and hedges are used to show the authors’ stance and engagement in research articles, as well as the writer’s commitment to the value proposition (Hyland, 2005; Miller et al., 2014).

For future research directions, it would be interesting to find out if a larger corpus of scripts from junior colleges would obtain similar findings. GP students could also be interviewed to get their own insights, in particular their linguistic choices, into constructing voice in academic writing. A longitudinal study to analyse how students progress in the argumentative genre from secondary to junior college may be useful in informing us about the developmental needs of students. Another area of interest is differences in the use of APPRAISAL resources in academic writing among L1, L2, and EFL contexts. At this point, for example, there have been few research studies, except Liu and Thompson’s (2009), on applying ATTITUDE resources in Chinese EFL students’ argumentative writing in both their L1 Chinese and L2 English contexts.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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