An investigation of L2 academic readers' awareness of stance markers and writer's stance toward cited research

• Main Authors: Tzu-Chun Yen, 顏慈君
• Other Authors: David Wible
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/pg27ue

碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 學習與教學研究所 === 105 === Academic writing presents not only informational and propositional content but also indications of the writer’s stance toward this content. Here writer’s stance means the lexical and grammatical expression of the writer’s attitude, feelings, judgments, or commitment concerning a message (Biber & Finegan, 1989). The ways that academic writers construct their stance in journal articles have been discussed in numerous studies; however, attention to how academic readers detect writer’s stance has been rare. This thesis is an investigation of L2 academic reader’s detection of the writer’s stance toward cited research. It aims to investigate readers’ awareness of writer’s stance toward cited research and stance markers that readers employ as clues to detect writer’s stance. Thus, three research questions are addressed: (1) To what extent are L2 academic readers, specifically graduate students, aware that the writer’s stance toward reported research is a feature of research writing worth their notice as readers? (2) To what extent are these readers able to detect the writer’s stance in specific cases? and (3) What contextual clues do L2 readers employ to recognize writer’s stance? A total of ten EFL graduate students with similar academic backgrounds participated in this study. Three instruments, including a reading task, a stance identification task, and a semi-structured interview, were implemented. The results of the three instruments are relevant to one another and helped to illuminate each other. With cross-referencing the results, three major findings are yielded. First, it was found from statistical analysis of first task and the participants’ interview responses that different instructions for the two groups did not result in significantly different performances on stance marker identification. The ability to detect writer’s stance may be affected by the extent of the importance that readers place on it rather than on instructions given for the experimental task. Second, academic readers may be aware that writer’s stance exists yet still not necessarily regard it as an important feature worth notice. Third, stance markers as contextual clues enhance academic readers’ detection of writer’s stance toward cited research. The findings of the thesis have shed light on the important role of writer’s stance detection. It is hoped to offer pedagogical implications for EFL instructors to enhance graduate students’ awareness of writer’s stance toward cited research in academic reading and arouse future research’s interest in exploring writer’s stance from readers’ perspectives.