Attitudinal patterning in effective MA research papers:

Pedagogical implications

Dr Gail FOREY, Dr Marvin LAM & Mr CHEUNG Lok Ming Eric

Department of English, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

AcknowledgementsPolyU Departmental Teaching & Learning Grant

MAELT students who have particpated

Background

challenges in academic writing

•Critical perspectives for developing knowledge; reconciling objectivity and critique (Hood, 2004a, 2010)

•Sound argumentation (Stuart-Smith, 1998)

•Evaluating competently and persuasively (Ballard, 1984; Ballard & Clanchy, 1981, 1988, 1991; Grabe & Kaplan, 1996)

•Creating an academic identity with proper language to achieve all of the above (Bhatia & Chandlin, 2001; Hyland, 1997, 2002; Littlewood & Liu, 1996)

TEACHERS’ EXPECTATIONS

•Academic conventions and stylistics; linguistic choice on meanings over impression; “preciseness” and “conciseness” (Creme & Lea, 2008; Evans & Green, 2007; Hyland, 2002)

•Understanding and evaluation of the academic area (Bi, 2011; Brick, 2006; Burgess, 2002)

Students’ view on being “critical”

•51 student feedbacks on MAELT programme in 2009/10

•Main questions

•What does it mean “to be critical”?

•How to be critical as an MA student?

•What process/steps are involved in critical reflection?

Frequency words related to “critical”

Lexeme Frequency Lexeme Frequency

reflect 34 opinion 8

judge 32 perspective7 (related word:

angle – 1 instance)

analyse 18 argue 9

accept10 (collocated

with “not” or “easily”)

alternative 5

question 7 selective 2

Interesting reflections on BEing “critical”

•To be critical, you have to think with a "negative" attitude, always raise doubt about what have been told, taught (R1)

•Critical thinking means you are brave and confident enough to argue (R2)

•Critical means do not easily accept whatever you receive. (R3)

What did they miss?

•Linguistic resources for expressing their critical stances

•Difficulty in or lack of knowledge in how to establish a critical voice by NNS students (Atkinson, 1997; Bi, 2008; Hood, 2004b)

•Control of objectivity and critique, or “a critical perspective… that questions and evaluates knowledge” (Hood, 2004a, p. 5)

Aim of the study

to develop materials to support

“academic literacy”

i.e. students effective writing of MA papers

Steps in achieving the study

•Defining “critical thinking” in tertiary education

•Quantifying interpersonal meanings to justify the rhetorical functions, if any, of each generic stage

• Investigating attitudinal patterning contributing the dynamic flow of emotion across phases of text

•Applying the findings to develop materials supporting “academic literacy”

Previous research works

promoting one point of view - exposition

arguments

text responses

literary

challenging a point of view - challenge

discussing two or more points of view - discussion

hortatory

academic

simple issue

evaluating a text - review

analytical

complex issue

challenging a message - critical response

interpreting a message of a text - interpretation

interpreting multiple texts in a field - literature review

critiquing an academic text - critical review

evaluating

Hood (2010)

WHAT GENRES WILL BE DISCUSSED?

LITERATURE ON GENRE, STAGING & STRUCTURAL

PATTERNS•Micro-genres and text types (Martin, 1997; Biber, 1989) constructing macro-genres (Martin & Rose, 2008)

•Generic/schematic structure (Hasan, 1973; Halliday & Martin, 1993; Martin, 1992; Paltridge, 1997; Samaraj, 2002; Yang & Allison, 2004)

•Structural patterning of RAs (Lin & Evans, 2012)• ILM[RD]C as common structure• Implications, Limitations, etc. as part of C

Discourse Semantics• Periodicity - Information flow (Martin & Rose 2007, Hood 2009)• Flagging forward and summarising back

• At a clause level – Theme/Rheme

• Paragraph – hyperTheme (topic sentence)

• Text – MacroTheme - intro, body, conclusion

• Appraisal Analysis (Martin & White 2005, Hood 2010)• Engagement

• Attitude

• Graduation

Layers of Theme and New in Discourse

(Martin & Rose 2007, p.199)

Method of development

(genre focus)

Point

(field focus)

Predict AccumulateTheme … Rheme

macroTheme

hyperTheme

hyperNew

macroNew

monogloss projection…

engagement heterogloss modality…

concession… affect…

appraisal attitude judgement…

appreciation…

raise force…

graduation lower

focus… sharpen

soften

Attitude of appraisal systems

Martin & White (2005, p. 59)

judgement & appreciation as institutionalised affect

Affect

Appreciation

Judgement

feeling institutionalised as propositionsaesthetics or value (criteria & assessment)

moral or ethics (criteria & assessment)feeling institutionalised as proposals

Martin & White (2005, p. 45)

Previous work on evaluation in academic writing

•Hood (2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2009, 2010) on

• Evaluation in the Introduction section

• Prosody of interpersonal values in textual periodicity

•Recent studies on research genre• Attitudinal values in academic writing (Lee, 2008;

Mizusawa, 2010)

• Appraisal resources across generic stages of grant proposals (Pascual & Unger, 2010)

Research questions•Relationship between attitudinal density and the rhetorical/persuasive functions across the generic stages

•How expert student writers communicate their arguments with the readership through lexico-grammatical choices

•How they achieve a consistent critical voice throughout the stages of the research paper

Methodology

Data collection

•26 research papers from MAELT students (local, Mainland Chinese, overseas)

•Corpus A: 14 effective papers (B+ or above); Corpus B: 12 less effective papers (B or below, with D as marginal)

•Both corpora are further divided into sub-corpora according to generic stages (ref. Lin and Evans (2012) on structural patterning of research articles)

Structural Patterns of Research Articles

(Lin & Evans, 2012)

Generic Stages Remarks

Stage 1 – Introduction Value and significance

Stage 2 – Literature ReviewRelated research in the field of

study

Stage 3 – MethodologyIncluding Data, Participants

(optional)

Stage 4 – Results and Discussion

Including Analysis of Results

Stage 5 – ConclusionIncluding Implication,

Suggestions, Limitations, Future research, etc.

Corpus & case study

•UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008)• Annotation of Attitudinal values• Delicacy of Analysis: Affect, Judgement,

Appreciation without sub-types identified• Corpus analysis

• Attitudinal density (per 1,000 words) in each stage• Types of Attitude in each stage

•Case study• Comparison of an A+ and a D paper

• Attitudinal patterning and distribution

Findings & Analysis

Assignment topic & requirements

• A small scale classroom-based research project

• Analysis/investigation of the approach to teaching written language (reading and/or writing) with an insider perspective

• Solution oriented investigation aiming at solving the problem identified

• Test the solution or simply make recommendations to the solution; develop concrete solutions which can then be incorporated in the classroom

• Relate observations and reflections to some of the literature read on the topic.

Effective research paper

attitudinal density across the effective papers

Summary of findings

•Appreciation is the dominant choice to maintain objectivity

•Encoding of judgement and affect depends on objects of study

•Reflecting that expert student writers were mastering the institutionalisation of feelings to establish objective criticality

Appreciation

•Evaluating teaching approaches, background of study, limitations, etc.

• Teachers always find problems [-app] and difficulties [-app] in teaching students with low proficiency.

• Such approach is effective [+app] to enable [+app] students to grasp fundamental facts [+app] and sequences in the context of exam question.

• Firstly, there is a time constraint [-app] in the lesson.

Judgement•Evaluating students’/teachers’ involvement, disposition, capabilities, etc.

• The teacher in study is an experienced [+jud] female teacher with good pronunciation and excellent class management skills [+jud].

• Positive reinforcement can always help students to build up their self-confidence [+jud] and provide them motivation [+jud] to make progress [+jud] and achieve an academic goal [+jud].

• Most people ignored [-jud] the teacher and would not listen [-jud] but doze [-jud] or play mobile phone games [-jud].

Affect•Evaluating students’/teachers’ emotional responses

• it is easy to find that students were well involved [+aff] and interested [+aff]. They laughed [+aff] after the teacher’s joking question in the end.

• The writer does not need to worry [+aff] if his writing contains grammatical mistakes or incoherence.

• She was young in twenties and interested [+aff] in experimenting innovative approaches in her teaching.

• As a result, many teachers were frustrated [-aff] at the gap …, cited by T2 and T3.

Less effective research papers

attitudinal density across the less effective papers

attitudinal density across the effective papers

Characteristics• Explicit affectual lexis making subjective authorial voice

or revealing the writers’ presence: want and need, with personal or inclusive pronouns I or we

• What I want [+aff] to suggest is that the teacher should make the students notice the words hey will use in their writing.

• We also need [+aff] to admit that poetry teaching can be assessed better.

• I was also moved [+aff] at the present as the only classroom observer.

• I believe [-jud] that GBP helps the students...

summary•Less effective student writers showed poor control of attitudinal density revealing the functions of the generic stages

•They failed to institutionalise affect to judgement and appreciation to establish an objective critique, or achieve a “formal tone”

•They often made personalised comments with I or we, one of the avoidances academic writers should make

Case studyCOMPARISON BETWEEN AN A+ & A D PAPER

attitudinal density across ELT0015A+

effective textual organisation with attitude

•Student managed to initiate the positive prosody at the peak of prominence - the hyperTheme

•The prosodic value spreads and augments across the phase of text and distilled at hyperNew

The tradition of approach in teaching writing has experienced a significant change after the occurrence of genre-based pedagogy. This approach, based on systemic-functional linguistics and Vygotsky’s social development theory, makes its ultimate goal as enabling the learners to write the educational genres of texts so that they can make a success in society. Teacher’s scaffolding plays a vital role in genre-based teaching.

SAMPLE PHASE OF TEXT

The tradition of approach in teaching writing has experienced a significant change after the occurrence of genre-based pedagogy. This approach, based on systemic-functional linguistics and Vygotsky’s social development theory, makes its ultimate goal as enabling the learners to write the educational genres of texts so that they can make a success in society. Teacher’s scaffolding plays a vital role in genre-based teaching.

SAMPLE PHASE OF TEXT

attitudinal density across ELT0007D

justifying the low graderegarding to attitude patterning

•Absence of the attitudinal values at the hyperTheme and hyperNew positions to set off the propagation of prosodic value

•Loose attitudinal patterning - disruption of the lexical harmonies - as a result of poor thematic patterning

This paper intends to analyze the stages of an American elementary school class using genre-based pedagogy. A case study was conducted by measures of videotaping, field notes and scripts discourse. The findings show the structure of genre-based pedagogy in teaching writing on informal reports. The purpose of this case study is to provide mainland ELT teachers with a clear insight into the nature of genre-based pedagogy in writing reports or other genres (text types), to offer alternative teaching method on writing and to learn from professionals by observing and identifying good practice.

SAMPLE PHASE OF TEXT

This paper intends to analyze the stages of an American elementary school class using genre-based pedagogy. A case study was conducted by measures of videotaping, field notes and scripts discourse. The findings show the structure of genre-based pedagogy in teaching writing on informal reports. The purpose of this case study is to provide mainland ELT teachers with a clear insight into the nature of genre-based pedagogy in writing reports or other genres (text types), to offer alternative teaching method on writing and to learn from professionals by observing and identifying good practice.

SAMPLE PHASE OF TEXT

This paper investigates an effective implementation of genre-based pedagogy in an American elementary school classroom. The findings collected from videotaping, field notes and scripts discourse show the substantial support to teaching writing informal reports with the pedagogy. This case study aims to inspire mainland ELT teachers with the practical example with a clear insight into the effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy in writing reports or other genres (text types). The study also offers an alternative writing pedagogy adopted in an authentic, professional context.

MODIFIED SAMPLE

Limitations &pedagogical implications

Limitations (1)•Hand-tagging of the attitudinal value of the corpus

• Tolerance of error and ambiguity (double coding)

•Hunston (2000) suggests analysis of evaluation is not to achieve a perfect analysis but to obtain “good enough” coverage to get an overall sense of evaluation within text.

Limitations (2)

•Delicacy of analysis - Lee (2008) on avoidance of app:reaction

•Corpus size - for colligational patterning evoking evaluation (ref. Hunston, 2011)

•Possibility for ethnographic study for the relationship between student identity and development of critical voice

Pedagogical Implications•Explicit critical writing pedagogy

• Conventions and requirements explained - e.g. criticality, coherence

•Concrete evaluative lexico-grammatical choice

•Textual organisation with evaluative resource distribution within at paragraphic level

•Development of academic support programmes

• Web-based pedagogic resources on literature review & research paper writing

• Acculturation to the academic community with solid “critical thinking” skills for exploration of new research areas

Website “How to write an effective MA literature review” (draft)

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Thank you very much.