Improving EFL students’ stance-taking in academic writing with SFL-based instruction: A qualitative inquiry

Abstract

Students of English as a foreign language (EFL) are often found to have weak control over authorial stance for constructing persuasive argumentation in academic writing. However, little interventional research has been reported on improving students’ stance-taking, particularly the patterning of stance resources. To fill the gap, we conducted this quasi-experimental study to explore the effects of the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) Engagement system as a pedagogical affordance on improving EFL students’ stance-taking with a pre- and post-test design. Forty-six Chinese EFL undergraduate students were randomly assigned either to a treatment group or a comparison group. The treatment group was provided with a seven-week intervention which included explicit instruction in stance-taking, while the comparison group received regular writing instruction that did not involve the teacher teaching stance-taking explicitly to students. Upon completion of the intervention, we conducted qualitative analysis of stance patterns and found across-group differences. Students in the treatment group were more capable of establishing argumentation through an alternation of contractive and expansive stances. The stance patterns for introducing external sources further indicate their enhanced undertaking of authorial responsibility and better incorporation of sources. However, both groups kept using unspecified sources in stance attributions. We conclude our study with a discussion of pedagogical implications.

Keywords

academic writing authorial stance EFL students Engagement system systemic functional linguistics (SFL)

I Introduction

The role that authorial stance plays in constructing academic argumentation has increasingly received research attention (Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Lancaster, 2014; Sawaki, 2014). It has been well acknowledged as essential for academic writers, both novices and experts, to strategically use stance resources to incorporate multiple perspectives and convey authorial opinions (e.g. Aull et al., 2017; Cheng & Unsworth, 2016; Crosthwaite & Jiang, 2017; Hyland & Jiang, 2016; Loghmani et al., 2020; Loi et al., 2016). However, appropriate deployment of stance resources is a big challenge for novice writers, especially novice writers of English as a foreign language (EFL; e.g. Chang, 2016; J.J. Lee & Deakin, 2016; L.J. Zhang, 2013). As frequently documented in the literature, such writers’ texts tend to be monoglossic, over-assertive, and non-committal towards cited sources (Hyland, 2012; Lancaster, 2014; Lee & Deakin, 2016; Xie, 2016). These stance-taking features are considered as less effective in the negotiation of dialogic interaction between the author and prospective readers and may hinder students’ progress towards better writing quality (Chang, 2016; L. Zhang & Zhang, 2021a, 2021b). Given the situation, how to scaffold EFL students to achieve more effective stance-taking is gradually becoming a crucial objective in EAP instruction in classrooms (Aull et al., 2017; Wingate, 2012; Zhao, 2017). In the EFL context of China, most universities have set up courses for English for academic purposes (EAP) for advanced undergraduate students (Teng, 2021; L.J. Zhang, 2016), but the instruction usually places an emphasis on content, organization, and formatting characteristics of academic genres, with evaluative issues, such as stance-taking, being neglected (Xie, 2016; Xiong & Zou, 2011; T.T. Zhang & Zhang, 2021). According to systemic function linguistics (SFL) theory, language is a social semiotic system for meaning-making (Halliday, 1994). Explicit teaching with metalanguage can draw learners’ attention to meaning-focused forms and facilitate their awareness-raising and learning about language (Moore & Schleppegrell, 2014; Norris & Ortega, 2000; Schmidt, 1990). Situated in SFL, Martin and White’s (2005) Engagement system categorizes linguistic resources of stance-taking as either contracting or expanding the dialogic space in terms of interpersonal functionality, which provides a framework that can guide writers’ metalanguage use in stance deployment and argument construction. This framework has been widely adopted in the analyses of students’ written texts (e.g. Lancaster, 2014; Liardét & Black, 2019; Loghmani et al., 2020; Wu, 2007), and its potential as a pedagogical affordance has been frequently recommended (e.g. Cheng & Unsworth, 2016; Coffin et al., 2012; S.H. Lee, 2010). Yet, so far, only a few interventional studies have been conducted and reported in the available literature, mainly focusing on the effects of Engagement-assisted instruction on the quantity and diversity of stance resources in student writings (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2016; Jou, 2019; L. Zhang & Zhang, 2021b). However, whether and how such an instruction would affect students’ patterning of stance resources in argument construction has been insufficiently investigated. As a number of researchers have shown, this aspect should not be neglected, as differences have been detected between high- and low-rated student writings in their combinations and patterns of stance resources (e.g. Lancaster, 2014, 2016a; Miller et al., 2014; Ryshina-Pankova, 2014). As Miller et al. (2014) argued, not only the quantity and diversity but also the ‘patterning’ of stance markers uncover how writers build arguments, which should be valued in teaching and learning writing (p. 118). This study, therefore, explored the effects of the SFL Engagement system as a pedagogical affordance on Chinese EFL students’ patterning of stance resources in academic writing.

II Literature review

1 Stance and the SFL Engagement system

Though approached under various terms (such as voice, evaluation), stance is essentially related to a writer’s expression of point of view and evaluations of propositions in the texts (White, 2003). In this study, we follow Lancaster (2014) to view stance as the ways in which the writers express authorial evaluations with respect to alternative views and prospective responses from readers. The two major approaches to the analysis of stance are based on Hyland’s (2005) interactional model and Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework, particularly one of its three subsystems, the Engagement system. While the former puts an emphasis on linguistic features related to form (Stock & Eik-Nes, 2016; Zhao, 2012), the latter pays more attention to interpersonal functions that can be realized through a variety of linguistic choices, which enable us to identify how ‘values are sourced and readers aligned’ in a more comprehensive way (Martin & Rose, 2007, p. 25). We thus proceeded with the appraisal tradition in our data analysis.

Grounded in SFL, the Engagement system models the linguistic resources the writers use to take a stance in relation to value positions referred to in the text and ‘negotiate an interpersonal space for their own positions’ (White, 2020, p. 1). The framework is informed by Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogism that regards all utterances, written or spoken, as fundamentally dialogic, crafted out of multiple voices in the social and disciplinary community that the writer has explicitly cited or implicitly interacted with. Stance-taking behaviors are thus regarded as the hidden traces of the writer’s management of the triangular interaction between self, alternative views, and readers (Wingate, 2012). Specifically, the Engagement system categorizes stance construction into monogloss and heterogloss, as shown in Figure 1. Monoglossic utterances assert the proposition barely with no overt reference to other voices or recognitions of alternative positions. In contrast, heteroglossic utterances overtly incorporate multiple voices or acknowledge potentially different viewpoints, which can be further divided into two broad categories of dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion according to their intersubjective functionality.

Figure 1.

The Engagement system.

The category of dialogic contraction acts to exclude certain dialogically alternative positions or constrains the scope of alternatives, which could be further classified into disclaim and proclaim. The formulations under disclaim can be further classified into two subtypes: deny and counter. By using stance markers for denial (e.g. not, never), the writer introduces and acknowledges the alternative position, and then directly rejects it. With countering markers (e.g. however, but), the writer presents the proposition as ‘replacing or supplanting’ a contrary position (Martin & White, 2005, p. 120).

The following are instances of stance subtypes, taken from the student texts in this study, with stance markers in bold.

(1) For example, students with poor self-control cannot devote themselves to online learning [disclaim: deny].

(2) There are many studies on autonomous learning, but there are less specific study on learning ability of English major freshmen [disclaim: counter].

The formulations under proclaim act to narrow down the dialogic space by presenting the proposition as ‘highly warrantable’ (Martin & White, 2005, p. 98), including three sub-types: concur, pronounce, and endorse. Through the concurring formulations (e.g. as we know), the writer appeals to have the shared knowledge with putative audience. The formulations of pronounce involve explicit authorial emphases or interpolations, such as by using intensifying adverbs (e.g. indeed, greatly), so as to insist upon the warrantability of the proposition through the authorial voice. Endorsement utterances source the proposition to external sources, which the authorial voice construe as valid and warrantable, such as by using affirmative reporting verbs (e.g. show, prove, point out, demonstrate).

(3) As we know, English learning websites are widely used [proclaim: concur].

(4) Indeed, media is a great influencer in public opinion [proclaim: pronounce].

(5) Baker pointed out that the major cause of Tess’s tragedy is the feudal times [proclaim: endorse].

The category of dialogic expansion actively allows for alternative positions and voices, which can be divided into entertain and attribute. The utterances of entertain make room for alternative positions by indicating that the authorial position is one option of many possibilities, such as via modal expressions (e.g. may), also known as ‘hedges’ in metadiscourse traditions (see Chen & Zhang, 2017; Hyland, 2005, 2016; Mu et al., 2015). With formulations of attribute,¹ the writer takes a neutral or distanced stand by attributing the proposition to external sources, by means of reporting verbs about communicative or mental processes (e.g. say, believe) or adverbial adjuncts (e.g. in X’s view). This category also includes instances where no specific source is provided (e.g. it is said that). Although both proclaim: endorse and attribute involve external sources, the former associates the cited proposition with the authorial subjectivity, while the later disassociates the proposition from the authorial voice by presenting it as grounded in the subjecthood of the external voice.

(6) Translating this book may help to exercise my translating ability [entertain].

(7) In Goldblatt’s view, Sandalwood Death shows the beauty of music [attribute].

2 SFL Engagement system as a pedagogical affordance

The SFL Engagement system has been frequently adopted as an analytic framework for investigating stance-taking in written texts, through both quantitative and qualitative inquiries (e.g. Lancaster, 2014; Miller et al., 2014). Many scholars recommend it as a pedagogical affordance that may be conducive to novice writers’ learning of stance-taking (e.g. Cheng & Unsworth, 2016; Coffin et al., 2012; S.H. Lee, 2010). Their rationale is that the Engagement system can serve as a set of metalanguage for writers to notice and thereafter acquire the valued features of stance deployment. However, to the best of our knowledge, only a few empirical studies have been conducted in classroom settings to examine the effectiveness of such a speculation in fostering students’ stance-taking practices.

An early endeavor by Humphrey and MacNaught (2016) converted the Engagement system into a pedagogical instrument for middle-school L2 students in an 18-month literacy learning project. It was found that students improved in their linguistic repertoire and control of interpersonal resources; some of them could use stance metalanguage to analyse and critique their own writing in terms of discourse semantic features. At the tertiary level, Chang and Schleppegrell (2016) conducted a study with seven Chinese EFL doctoral students in social sciences. They developed a corpus tool based on the Engagement system, showcasing metalinguistic resources and effective stance patterns in academic introductions. After three training sessions, participants made progress in accurately identifying and applying stance resources, particularly when presenting assertive claims and factual statements. However, they performed less satisfactorily in utilizing expansive stances and managing stance patterns across clauses. In another study, Jou (2019) used the Engagement system as a heuristic to scaffold L2 writers’ metacognitive awareness and learning of evaluative resources in article reviews. Provided with a seven-week intervention, nine participants (seven graduates and two undergraduates) became more aware of how various linguistic choices contributed to the author’s evaluative stance and commitment. However, they varied in metacognitive development as well as the uptake of Engagement metalanguage, which might be affected by language proficiency and time investment. More recently, L. Zhang and Zhang (2021b) examined the effectiveness of an eight-week Engagement-assisted intervention with EFL undergraduates through a quasi-experimental design. Results showed that the treatment group outperformed the comparison group in terms of writing quality; the intervention group further exhibited changes in the frequencies of various stance types, indicating improvement in mitigation and integration of source texts.

The existing studies have provided preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of Engagement-assisted writing instruction in terms of enhancing students’ awareness and deployment of stance resources for better writing outcomes. However, several limitations can be identified in their research setup. First, these studies mainly adopted quantitative measures, such as writing scores (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2016; Humphrey & MacNaught, 2016), or the quantity and diversity of stance tokens (L. Zhang & Zhang, 2021b). Important as these measures are, what remains underexplored is whether and how the Engagement metalanguage could be of service in developing stance patterns for constructing academic argumentation. As Aull and Lancaster (2020) have recently argued, stance tokens do not function in isolation: they ‘work together across sections of a text’ and contribute to ‘overall stylistic effects’ (p. 102). Another thing is that, although two studies (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2016; Jou, 2019) involved examination of stance patterns, both were case studies involving a limited number of participants with no comparison group, which, as the researchers acknowledge, may constrain their claims for the effectiveness of instruction. And development of stance patterns was not one of their major research purposes. In Jou’s (2019) study, examination of stance patterns was supplementary to demonstrate students’ expanded repertoire, rather than their ways to build argumentation. Chang and Schleppegrell (2016) showed effective and ineffective stance patterns rather than the development of patterns related to pedagogical practices.

Based on the above research gaps, this study made an attempt to investigate how the SFL Engagement system used as a pedagogical affordance would affect EFL students’ stance patterns in academic writing. The findings are expected to shed light on the effectiveness of explicit stance instruction on novice writers’ development of stance-taking and academic writing.

III Methods

This study utilized a quasi-experimental design with a treatment group and a comparison group of EFL students in an EAP classroom to examine the effect of the SFL Engagement-assisted instruction on EFL students’ stance patterns. Two research questions guided this study:

Research question 1: Is there any difference in the stance patterns between the treatment and the comparison groups after the writing instruction?

Research question 2: If so, how do the stance patterns influence students’ construction of argumentation?

1 Participants

This study involved 46 EFL students from two intact classes as a convenience sample. All of them were Year 3 English majors enrolled in an EAP writing course who had no previous learning experience about academic writing. We randomly assigned the two classes into the treatment group and the comparison group. The treatment group involved 24 students, including 21 females and 3 males between the ages of 19 and 23 years (M = 20.79, SD = .977), and the comparison group involved 22 students, including 16 females and 6 males between the ages of 20 and 23 years (M = 20.86, SD = .774).

2 Pre- and post-tests

The introduction genre was used as pre- and post-test writing to investigate students’ stance-taking. Introduction writing is regarded as a challenging task for non-native student writers, in which the writer needs to express evaluative voices and argue for a position by referring to the research background (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Sawaki, 2014). Considering that participants possessed limited knowledge about academic writing, we simplified the writing task to some extent. Participants were required to introduce a research topic, on which they only needed to argue and justify why the topic was important, interesting, or problematic. They were allowed to refer to previous findings or opinions to support their own argumentation. Both the treatment and the comparison groups were invited to accomplish a 300-word writing assignment before and immediately after the period of a writing intervention, which is described in detail below.

3 Writing intervention

The writing intervention was conducted in a compulsory EAP course for 3rd-Year English-major undergraduate students. The course lasted for 16 weeks in total. Due to practical constraints, the intervention was implemented in the treatment group for seven weeks with 45 minutes per week. Table 1 provides an overview of the intervention. In the first four weeks, the teacher illustrated each stance type according to the Engagement system, in which the technical terms of metalanguage were simplified to facilitate students’ learning (see also Chang & Schleppegrell, 2016). Monoglosses were introduced as taking a ‘non-argumentative’ stance. Utterances of dialogic contraction and expansion were labelled as ‘high-argumentative’ and ‘low-argumentative’, respectively. During these sessions, typical stance markers in each stance type and their dialogic functionality were explicitly illustrated with sample introductions from published journal articles selected from Chang’s (2008) Authorial stance database. The database provides authentic linguistic data for L2 student writers to explore examples and patterns of stance-taking in research introductions (see also Chang, 2012; Chang & Schleppegrell, 2016). In Weeks 5 and 6, students were engaged in text analysis tasks in which they identified stance markers and types in sample introductions at the sentence and discourse levels. The teacher also drew students’ attention to the stance patterns in building academic argumentation. In Week 7 students worked in pairs to review their own pre-test writing and provide feedback on stance use.

Table 1.

Writing intervention for the treatment group.

Time	Instruction
Week 1	Stance types: Non-argumentative (Monogloss)
Week 2	Stance types: Argumentative (Heterogloss)
Week 3	Two types of argumentative stance: 1. High-argumentative • Deny or counter a view • Agree, support or strongly argue for a view
Week 4	Two types of argumentative stance: 2. Low-argumentative • Provide a possible view • Refer to others’ views without indicating agreement or disagreement
Weeks 5–6	Text analysis: Stance identification and pattern awareness
Week 7	Peer-feedback on pre-test writing

While the treatment group received Engagement-assisted intervention, the comparison group received the same length of the regular writing course according to the syllabus. The same instructor taught the comparison group how to build arguments on various topics, focusing on content and organization. No explicit instruction of stance-taking was provided.

4 Procedures for data collection

Before the writing intervention, we provided both the treatment and the comparison groups with a one-hour workshop on introduction writing. Students were then granted one week to complete the pre-test writing assignment. The texts were then electronically collected with their consent. After the collection of pre-test writing, the treatment group was provided with the writing intervention, while the comparison group received regular instruction according to the course syllabus, which did not have any requirement for teaching stance-taking.

Classroom observation was conducted in both groups during the period of writing intervention to ensure teaching fidelity and that the teacher did not implement the intervention package in the comparison group. Immediately after the completion of the writing intervention, students from both groups were asked to revise their own pre-test writing with no variation in the topic as the post-test. All the collected written texts were, first, reviewed for plagiarism checking by using Turnitin² before data analysis. No text was removed at this step. To guarantee that the comparison group was not disadvantaged, the writing intervention package was provided to them by the same teacher after data collection completed.

5 Data analysis

After data collection and plagiarism checking, a third person was invited to rearrange the written texts with grouping information temporarily removed in order to avoid potential subjective bias. We began manual coding by breaking each text into T-units, which are main clauses with their subordinate clauses (Hunt, 1965). Each T-unit was labeled with reference to the coding scheme adapted from the Engagement system (see Appendix 1 in supplemental material). Though a given T-unit may encompass multiple stance markers, we restricted our coding mainly according to the main clauses, which generated the bulk of evaluative meaning (see also Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Jou, 2019; Lancaster, 2014). To ensure reliability, a second coder was invited to code 20 texts. The inter-coder agreement was 86.7% and disagreements were resolved through discussion. Qualitative analysis was then conducted to identify stance patterns in each text (see also Ryshina-Pankova, 2014). We first took each text as a whole and identified the major pattern of stance resources that the student used recurrently to construct argumentation. We further analyzed exclusively the stance pattern when the student introduced external sources to support his/her own claims. The proportions of different stance patterns were then calculated for each group and cross-group comparisons were conducted.

IV Results

We present our findings in two parts. The first part reports the differences between the treatment and comparison groups in the overall patterns of stance-taking. The second part illustrates the differences in stance patterns when students introduced external sources into their writings. In each part, proportions of different stance patterns were provided, followed by text exemplars illustrating patterns that are markedly different between the two groups after the writing intervention.

1 Overall stance patterns: Assertive vs. interactive

Figure 2 renders a visual presentation of the overall stance patterns from the two groups in pre- and post-tests. We found that in the pre-test the majority of students in both groups (62.5% in the comparison group; 72.7% in the treatment group) developed their arguments by recursively applying a pattern combining monogloss with contractive stances, particularly disclaim: counter and proclaim: pronounce. In the post-test the bulk of the comparison group (63.6%) kept using the same stance patterns as in the pre-test. Although a part of students (36.4%) deployed more diverse stance types, the recurring patterns were mostly composed of an alternation of monogloss and various types of contractive stances, with expansive stances rarely occurring. After the writing intervention, while 25% of the treatment group used the dominant pattern in the pre-test and another 29.2% applied monogloss together with various contractive stances, similar to the emergent patterns in the comparison group, a considerable proportion of the treatment group (45.8%) employed a pattern involving interactive alternation of contractive and expansive stances in the establishment of argumentation.

Figure 2.

Overall stance patterns in pre- and post-tests.

We use excerpt (1) from the comparison group and excerpt (2) from the treatment group to exemplify the post-test differences in the overall stance patterns for constructing argumentation. Key stance markers are in bold and stance types are in brackets, excluding monogloss.

(1) The diet is the first need for human’s survival and development. As the old adage, ‘bread is the staff of life,’ it fully explains how highly people think of eating [contract: proclaim: endorse]. It is a universal truth that different areas have different diets [contract: proclaim: concur]. Over the past few decades, there have been many studies about Chinese and western diets. They analysed the differences in diet etiquettes, dish names, ingredients, and some other things. Take diet etiquettes for example, Chinese sit around a table to eat together, meanwhile they toasting each other and talking loudly. But westerners eat quietly [contract: disclaim: counter]. I must admit that those are veritable differences [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. However, I want to indicate that those are rooted in different cultures [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. Clark, an American well-known anthropologist, in his work What is Culture points out that ‘Absolutely a person’s diet is subjected to the restrictions of its access to food species, but also subjected to cultural constraints.’ [contract: proclaim: endorse] It can be seen how inseparable diet and culture are [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. People grow up in different cultures bear different characteristics, have various beliefs and diverse living habits. Hence those form distinctive diets. As the process of global integration, the exchange of Chinese and western culture is becoming closer. Of course, cultural difference in food is a common context [contract: proclaim: concur]. Nowadays western food is common in China, and Chinese restaurants also spread all over the world. Therefore, it is important for us to have a good acknowledge of the two cultures. (CPo10)³

In excerpt (1), the student was elucidating the importance of understanding the differences between Chinese and western dietary cultures. The paragraph started with a monoglossic proposition asserting the importance of diet, which was supported by an external source from direct quotation through proclaim: endorse. She then indicated the dietary differences by using monogloss accompanied by disclaim: counter. Afterwards, the central claims were proposed through proclaim: pronounce: those dietary differences were rooted in cultures, which projected a subjective insistence upon the credibility of the proposition that could pose a risk to reader solidarity. To support her position, she endorsed the voice from an anthropologist, which was followed again by a subjective interpolation of proclaim: pronounce indicating the close relationship between diet and culture. At last, the writer indicated the commonness of food differences in different cultures by bare assertions and enacting concurrence with the putative reader. Overall, it could be noted that the writer established arguments through the recurring alternation of monogloss and contractive stances. The constant contraction of dialogic scope leaves little space for alternative positions, which may pose threats to reader solidarity as putative readers might hold different viewpoints. The repetitive adoption of overly strong voices in close proximity could further result in unwarranted claims and assertive arguments. It could also be noticed that the student used several informal expressions as stance markers (e.g. I must admit that; I want to indicate that). This may indicate that students may still lack understanding of academic genres to be able to write appropriately.

In contrast, the treatment group started to adopt the recurring alternation of expansive and contractive stances in the establishment of argumentation. See excerpt (2):

(2) In current society, there are increasing transnational marriages. People like to choose their partners from other countries, because they enjoy the unique and novel conjunction of two cultures. However, they ignore some potential conflicts [contract: disclaim: counter]. According to the report from China National Radio in 2016, the divorce rate of transnational marriage was up to 30% in South Korea [expand: attribute]. It seems to attract public attention that there are many potential problems and contradictions in transnational marriages [expand: entertain]. Some people think the reasons which lead to the divorces of transnational marriages are the same as domestic marriages [expand: attribute]. However, that viewpoint was not persuasive [contract: disclaim: counter], because it did not mention the different cultural backgrounds between couples [contract: disclaim: deny]. Obviously, the researches on transnational marriages should not ignore the disparate cultural environments [contract: proclaim: concur], because the environment is extremely influential for one’s growth [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. Since a person was born, most of the information he received was from the environment and society. Hence, a person’s values, world view and outlook on life prone to conform to the cultural background [expand: entertain]. And people with different cultures tend to have different personalities, habits and views [expand: entertain]. If those differences cannot be understand and recognized, they may bring about some quarrels and controversies in marriages [expand: entertain]. As far as I concerned, the root cause of conflicts are the dissimilar views of marriage [expand: entertain]. If people know their partners’ cultural backgrounds and recognize the differences between their views of marriage, they may understand their partners better and try to think in the way of the other in quarrels [expand: entertain]. Hence, realising the different views of marriage can help couples avoid and resolve conflicts effectively and run their marriages successfully. (TPo21)

The student was discussing the importance of different views on marriage in different cultures involved in a transnational marriage. She first introduced the increasing popularity of transnational marriages by using monogloss. Then she used disclaim: counter to supplant the view and proposed her own idea that potential conflicts in such marriages were ignored. Afterwards, the student provided evidence to support her position by attributing to external sources (i.e. the report from China National Radio). She then led the argument to the public view of problems involved in transnational marriages through entertain and attribute. Subsequently, disclaim: counter was used to provide a contrary position that the viewpoint was not persuasive, followed by an explanation through disclaim: deny that cultural background was not taken into account. The student further argued for the significance of cultural influences on transactional marriages by enacting concurrence with the reader and accentuating it through intensifiers pertinent to having to proclaim: pronounce. After explanations through monogloss and entertain, the student clearly proposed the central claim that different views of marriage from different cultures were the root cause of conflicts in transnational marriages. By means of entertain (i.e. as far as I’m concerned), the argument was granted as ‘the writer’s own subjectivity’ that construed a ‘heteroglossic backdrop’ by which the writer indicated a recognition that others might not share this position (Martin & White, 2005, p. 107). The student concluded the argumentation by indicating the research significance through entertain.

Overall, the writer employed various contractive and expansive stances to build the argumentation. The alternation of contractive and expansive stances proceeded throughout the text: From countering common views, to attributing to other sources and voices, to countering them by indicating the defects, to proclaiming and entertaining one’s own ideas. Through this pattern, the writer proposed ideas and interacted with other voices in an intersubjective dialogue. As a result, the interactive configuration of stance resources contributes to a more convincing argumentation, compared with excerpt (1) from the comparison group.

2 Stance patterns for introducing external sources: Inclusive vs. interpretive

Qualitative differences were further detected concerning students’ use of stance resources when introducing external sources to support argumentation between the two groups in the post-test writing. Figure 3 presents a comparison of stance patterns for introducing external sources between the two groups in pre- and post-tests. We first noticed that in the pre-tests, around half of the students in both groups (54.5% in the comparison group, 50% in the treatment group) did not refer to external sources in their writing. After the intervention, an increased number of students in the treatment group (83.3%) were able to introduce external sources, while the comparison group (50%) remained roughly unchanged.

Figure 3.

Stance patterns for introducing external sources in pre- and post-tests.

The second finding is that when referring to external sources, both groups of students similarly drew on a pattern combining monogloss with either proclaim: endorse or attribute prior to the writing intervention. In the post-test, the comparison group generally continued to draw on the similar patterns, while 37.5% of students in the treatment group manifested developmental changes in the stance patterns by further adding proclaim: pronounce or endorse. We use excerpt (3) from the comparison group and excerpt (4) from the treatment group to demonstrate the post-test differences.

(3) For decades, researchers and experts from all walks of life have dedicated themselves to exploring the nature of love. Physiologists maintain that feelings of love are a complicated biochemical reaction happening in people’s brain [expand: attribute]; psychologists regard love as manifestations of social contact [expand: attribute]; social psychologists propose that love mainly derives from physical attractiveness [expand: attribute]. (CPo18)

In excerpt (3), the student constructed the argument by first introducing the research field through a bare assertion. The subsequent three sentences were all attributions to invite external opinions from various perspectives. The argument then ended with no further explanation or integration of the external opinions in the central claim the writer intended to present. This shows that the writer tended to include external sources as follow-up evidence for the preceding claim without further illustration.

(4) Indeed, the quality of family education determines the future development of children [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. Many findings have shown that the children who were educated in fine families may have good characters and success mostly. On the other hand, children who grow up in a discordant family tend to behave badly, they even have criminal act [contract: proclaim: endorse]. According to Twyman Johnson, successful tutoring possibly leads to successful children, and failed parenting leads to failed children [expand: attribute]. His words just illustrated the importance of family education [contract: proclaim: endorse]. Most of previous researches have noted the closed relation between family education and children’s development [contract: proclaim: endorse]. From these we can clearly see that a good family education have considerable influence on children and it is important to understand the factors that family education has the effect on children [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. (TPo20)

In excerpt (4), the student from the treatment group first proposed the central claim through proclaim: pronounce that family education affects children’s development. She then endorsed and attributed to the previous findings to support the central claim. In the following sentence the student used a proclaim: endorse move (i.e. His words just illustrated . . .) to interpret the attributed source text above and emphasize the opinion. The argument proceeded with another endorsement of previous research as supporting evidence. At the end of the paragraph, the student writer provided additional interpretation through proclaim: pronounce and further aligned with the imagined reader as having shared understanding by using the pronoun ‘we’. It could be noted that the student not only listed the external sources as supporting evidence but provided further illustration to integrate the evidence better into the development of the argumentation. The stance pattern used here provided an interpretive support to the central claim.

To deepen our understanding of students’ stance development concerning external sources, we further examined how students particularly used the two stance types (proclaim: endorse and attribute) for introducing external sources. Endorsement is dialogically contractive, which indicates the writer’s adjudgment of the referred voices as ‘maximally warrantable’ (Martin & White, 2005, p. 127). Attribution is dialogically expansive, representing the invited voice as one among many alternatives. It was found that endorsing stances were primarily achieved through direct quotations in pre-test for both groups (87.5% in the comparison group; 62.5% in the treatment group). For instance, as in excerpt (5) the student directly borrowed a proverb to support the previous claim:

(5) As the proverb goes, ‘each place has its own way of supporting its own inhabitants’ [contract: proclaim: endorse]. (TPr2)

In the post-test, the comparison group sustained to endorse external sources mainly through direct quotations without modification (91.7%), which only constituted a rather low percentage of endorsed utterances from the treatment group (18.2%). Instead, students in the treatment group started to paraphrase with fragment uses of quotations, and deployed diverse endorsing markers (e.g. point out, propose, firmly believe . . .) to integrate the external sources, such as in excerpt (6).

(6) Baker in his masterpiece <In other words, translation tutorial introduction> pointed out that the term ‘equivalence’ is only used for convenience rather than its theoretical status [contract: proclaim: endorse]. (TPo6)

With regard to the deployment of attribution, a salient feature was noticed that in the pre-test both groups involved a high proportion of hearsay formulations with no specified sources of information (70% of attribution instances in the comparison group; 58.9% in the treatment group). After the writing intervention, both groups continued to refer to unspecified sources (73.7% of attribution instances in the comparison group; 71.4% in the treatment group), as shown in excerpt (7).

(7) In ancient China, it has already been paid attention to building a great teacher–student relationship [contract: proclaim: pronounce]. Confucius had said that with education, there is no distinction between classes or races of men [expand: attribute]. It is also said that teachers should be tireless in teaching [expand: attribute]. While some educators thought that students must obey teachers completely with no doubt, and teachers had the right to punish students who did not behave themselves [expand: attribute]. (CPr22)

The student tried to support the central claim that people in ancient China paid great attention to teacher–student relationships by attributing to three external sources, of which two were from unclear origins (i.e. it is said, some educators thought . . .). As Martin and White (2005) elucidated, attributed formulations ‘disassociate the propositions from the internal authorial voice’ to external sources (p. 126). With unspecified sources, these attributions may reduce the reliability and credibility of the propositions in arguments.

V Discussion

Our findings reveal systematic differences in the patterns of stance deployment between the treatment and the comparison groups after the provision of the writing intervention. In terms of overall stance patterns, a considerable proportion of students in the treatment group were able to employ various contractive and expansive stances in alternation to construct argumentation after the writing intervention, which the comparison group did not deploy. As shown in excerpt (2), contractive and expansive stances were interwoven together in a wave-like style, creating a balance between acknowledging and estimating possible views, and proposing authorial opinions. The finding is consistent with previous studies comparing successful and less successful student writings (e.g. Lancaster, 2014; Ryshina-Pankova, 2014), in which the former displayed an interaction between contractive and expansive stance markers. This indicates that the treatment group performed better in establishing an intersubjective dialogue through various stance resources for academically valued arguments. This echoes S.H. Lee’s (2008) contention that a more competent writer could effectively manipulate the interaction between personal viewpoint and persuasion through a ‘dynamic shift’ interweaving contractive and expansive stances (p. 259). As authorial views and the alternative perspectives were interwoven, the texts were expected to be more interactive, dialogic, and persuasive (S.H. Lee, 2008). Classroom activities in the intervention, such as text analysis tasks, may generate positive effects on students’ ability to explore stance meanings in the discoursal context. As found in Chang’s (2012) study, learners would frequently turn to the context to make sense of stance meanings. Students’ attention may have been drawn to the stance pattern at the discourse level, which helped them to become more purposeful and strategic in manipulating dialogic space in the writing process.

In contrast, the comparison group mainly relied on monogloss and contractive stances for the construction of argumentation, with rare instances of expansive stances (see excerpt 1). This recurrent pattern projects an assertive position where the writer keeps challenging the alternative views, conceding little room for negotiation. The putative readers could have been constantly surprised by the countering expectations or confronted with authorial emphases (Martin & White, 2005). There would exist the risk of misalignment as the putative readers might object to the viewpoint or axiological paradigm in the text. This pattern may give the impression that the arguments were built on descriptive facts or the writer’s own assertions, which may decrease the persuasive impact (Ryshina-Pankova, 2014). Previous research has discovered similar patterns in low-scoring student essays at the tertiary level (e.g. S.H. Lee, 2008; Miller et al., 2014; Wu, 2007). The finding suggests that the stance patterns of the comparison group might result in unwarranted claims which would undermine the overall argumentation. Our findings concerning overall stance patterns are consistent with L. Zhang and Zhang’s (2021b) study in which students showed increased use of expansive stances after explicit instruction of stance, indicating their improved capacity of mitigation to achieve better results in academic writing. The findings also echo Chang and Schleppegrell’s (2016) results in which students showed improvement in deploying stance markers to fulfill rhetorical purposes in academic introductions after the Engagement-informed instruction.

The treatment group also showed improvement in the way they introduced external sources after the writing intervention, compared with the comparison group. While the comparison group only included the external sources as follow-up evidence for the preceding claim (see excerpt 3), the treatment group took one more step to add further authorial interpretations about the external sources by using contractive stances (see excerpt 4). This resonates with the finding of Miller et al. (2014) in high-scoring students that they were more effective in incorporating the source text into the development of arguments than low-scoring students. The results provide evidence for previous contention that improving students’ awareness of the dialogical functions of stance markers could be helpful for a better integration of external sources in writing (J.J. Lee et al., 2018; Wette, 2018; Xu & Zhang, 2019), particularly for achieving two rhetorical purposes, namely, ‘to support the claim that precedes retrospectively and to contextualize the claim that follows prospectively’ (S.H. Lee, 2008, p. 258). One possible reason for this finding is that the treatment group might have greater authorial engagement in the writing process after the writing intervention. According to the dual-process model of writing (Galbraith, 2009), inclusion of external sources without further illustration features the knowledge-retrieval process, while incorporation of external sources with authorial interpretation manifests the knowledge-constituting process. It thus could be assumed that some students from the treatment group went through a knowledge-constituting process with greater active engagement in building convincing arguments, as a result of learning stance-taking.

In addition to the patterns, our results further manifested distinguished features concerning participants’ use of two stance subtypes (proclaim: endorse and attribute) for introducing external sources. In terms of endorsement, compared with the comparison group in the post-test, the treatment group tended to endorse sources less through direct borrowing and more through paraphrasing with modification, a justifiable process of appropriation that indicates more investments of effort in the writing process (Walsh Marr, 2019; Wette, 2010). This resonates with previous findings (e.g. J.J. Lee et al., 2018; Petrić, 2012) that high proficiency students exert considerable effort in reworking the sourced materials to build their own writing, and are thus less likely to insert materials without modification than low proficiency students. The result thus suggests that the intervention in the treatment group may have helped students to become more cognizant of their role as the author and also in refraining from borrowing the external sources verbatim.

Another finding is that the majority of students from both groups continued to deploy attribute together with an unspecified source after the writing instruction, such as by using expressions ‘it is also said’, ‘some educators thought’ (excerpt 7). This result resonates with Kwon et al.’s (2018) finding that L2 undergraduate students frequently employed uncited generalization or vague references. This may be due to the fact that students were not fully aware that vague references could reduce a writer’s credibility in academic writing, as such references are considered appropriate in spoken settings (Kwon et al., 2018; Staples & Reppen, 2016). Xie (2016) also argued that students’ lack of knowledge about academic writing may pose an impact on their stance-taking when referring to external sources. It is thus suggested that students need further guidance on effective attribution and citation practices in academic writing, so that they can be more aware of the effects generated by linguistic choices (Charles, 2006).

VI Conclusions

This study explored the effects of a writing intervention based on the SFL Engagement system on the patterns of stance deployment in EFL students’ academic writing. After the intervention, the treatment group exhibited improvement in constructing arguments through an interplay of various types of contractive and expansive stances. Additionally, more stance-taking instances involving external sources from the treatment group were presented together with authorial interpretation and less through direct borrowing, indicating students’ improved awareness and capability for taking authorial responsibility in incorporating external sources. However, it was also found that both groups consistently paired attribute stances to unspecified sources, which suggests that these students may need further pedagogical support for effective attribution and citation practices when learning stance. Our employment of the Engagement metalanguage in the course design adds further evidence for its potential as a pedagogical affordance. To echo and address the concerted call for explicit teaching of stance (e.g. Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011, 2016; Crosthwaite & Jiang, 2017; L. Zhang & Zhang, 2021a), our study further corroborates the effectiveness of using the SFL Engagement system in classroom to facilitate students’ acquisition of stance markers and corresponding interpersonal functions, which ultimately benefits academic writing outcomes. Furthermore, our analysis in this study has demonstrated how the nuanced differences of stance patterns in students’ texts can be revealed, providing methodological insights in response to previous advocacy for the qualitative exploration on stance (e.g. Miller et al., 2014; Ryshina-Pankova, 2014; Yoon & Römer, 2020).

1 Pedagogical implications

Informed by the findings, several pedagogical options could be recommended for enhancing EFL students’ stance use and academic writing quality. In line with other scholars’ recommendations (e.g. Chang & Schleppegrell, 2016; Hyland, 2016; Loghmani et al., 2020), instruction in authorial stance should be explicit and greater attention should be paid to expansive stances which substantially differentiates the overall stance patterns in student writing in this study. Additionally, more attention should be paid to students’ incorporation of external sources in academic writing. It could be helpful to provide further input and guidance on effective attribution and citation practices in stance instruction. Source-based writing would be a recommended task to train students to incorporate sources with their own views by using stance markers. With an enhanced awareness of the dialogic effects of stance-taking and a broader spectrum of linguistic options, students would be able to gain a better control over stance resources for establishing persuasive argumentation.

2 Limitations and recommendations for further research

Several limitations of this study need to be pointed out. First, we only explored stance patterns with EFL novice writers who may possess limited understanding of the academic genre. Further research could examine stance patterns with more advanced students equipped with more genre knowledge. Another limitation is that we did not examine the prosodic effect of stance in student writing, as interpersonal meaning may spread across clauses (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Hood, 2006). It is recommended that further research be conducted into how prosodies radiate through stance markers. Future research could also approach students’ stance development by incorporating quantitative measures with qualitative analysis of stance patterns. The use of mixed methods would help to triangulate data sources and further reveal nuanced differences that could not be detected by each form of data. Additionally, future studies could examine students’ retrospective responses to specific stance decisions in their writing, such as through discourse-based interviews (Lancaster, 2016b), which would be highly revealing of students’ development of stance knowledge and practices and offer insights into academic writing instruction.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ltr-10.1177_13621688231164758 – Supplemental material for Improving EFL students’ stance-taking in academic writing with SFL-based instruction: A qualitative inquiry

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ltr-10.1177_13621688231164758 for Improving EFL students’ stance-taking in academic writing with SFL-based instruction: A qualitative inquiry by Lu Zhang and Lawrence Jun Zhang in Language Teaching Research

Footnotes

Funding

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

ORCID iDs

Lu Zhang

Lawrence Jun Zhang

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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