Engagement Resources Used by Experts and Novice EFL Academic Writers

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Moharram Sharifi ¹ , Biook Behnam ² , Saeideh Ahangari ³

1 - PhD Candidate in TEFL, Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor, Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Received: 2021-06-29 Accepted : 2021-06-29 Published : 2021-04-01

Keywords: Literacy Skills, Engagement resources in writing, Expert writer, Novice writer,

Abstract :

The purpose of this study was to show how expert and novice writers take position and stance in Research Article and Master of Art theses Introductions, so Engagement resources were investigated in 30 Research Articles and 30 Master of Art theses written by non-native Iranian speakers. Through paired samples t-test analysis, we found out that the mean occurrences of heteroglossia items in both RA and Master thesis Introductions were larger than those of monoglots items, indicating the awareness of both groups of writers to ‘engage’ alternative positions in Introduction sections. The results also revealed that wide choices were preferred over contractive options in both corpora, implying both groups of writers’ respects to alternative voices cautiously by welcoming rather than closing down the possibility of different perspectives and stances. Furthermore, unlike novice academic writers who used more Attribute features than Entertainment ones in their MATs introduction sections, expert academic writers employed a balanced number of Entertainment and Attributed in their RA introduction sections. The balanced deployment of Entertain and Attribute features in RA Introductions by expert writers might be characteristics of the writers’ demonstration of politeness, which is commonly accepted as an essential feature in academic writing discourse. Finally, through qualitative analysis, it was demonstrated that MAT writers as novice academic writers suffered from lacking appropriate evaluative stance and authorial voice towards propositions

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