Does online instruction in discourse conventions of literary analysis affect L2 students’ critical stance in academic writing? A longitudinal study
A longitudinal study
Keywords:
Critical stance, discourse conventions of literary criticism, evaluation, longitudinal corpus, online instructionAbstract
The purpose of this study is to explore L2 students’ longitudinal development of critical stance patterns in academic writing as a result of their exposure to online instruction in the discourse conventions of literary criticism. The data consisted of a 75661-word longitudinal corpus of 63 essay assignments, collected over 7 weeks’ instruction via pre-, during- and post-instruction google classroom submissions. Applying Martin & White’s (2005) appraisal taxonomy, the data was analyzed for frequency and wording differences using manual coding of attitude, graduation, and engagement markers through UAM Corpus Tool. The results show a significant longitudinal decrease in the use of linguistic resources which express personal feelings and make the construed evaluative meanings forceful and compelling. This shows that the teaching and the learning methods employed in the online instruction may have impacted L2 students’ ability to develop a formal style of academic writing; the results also indicate a less significant longitudinal increase in the use of linguistic resources that construe a register-appropriate critical stance, such as the use of attitude sub-types of judgment and appreciation. This shows that the teaching and learning methods employed in the online instruction may not have impacted L2 students’ ability to develop a register-appropriate critical stance. These findings have far-reaching implications for the use of online mode to make explicit the discourse conventions of literary criticism to L2 students. They show the extent to which the integration of certain teaching and learning methods in online instruction has an impact on L2 students' academic writing.
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