This is a pre-print version of the following research article. It can be cited as follows:

Lee, J. J., & Deakin, L. (2016). Interactions in L1 and L2 undergraduate student writing: Interactional metadiscourse in successful and less-successful argumentative essays. Journal of Second Language Writing, 33, 21-34.

The final version can be downloaded from the following link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1060374316300315

Interactions in L1 and L2 Undergraduate Student Writing: Interactional Metadiscourse in

Successful and Less-successful Argumentative Essays

Abstract

This study explores interactional metadiscourse in successful and less-successful (i.e., A- vs. B-

graded) argumentative essays written by Chinese ESL university students, and how these ESL

writers compare with high-rated L1 students. The analysis is based on three corpora of student

writing: 25 successful ESL essays, 25 less-successful ESL essays, and 25 successful L1 English

papers. Using Hyland’s (2005a) model of interactional metadiscourse, these papers were

compared to examine the extent to which successful and less-successful student-produced

argumentative essays differ in their employment of stance and engagement resources. Findings

of the analysis suggest that successful essays, both L1 and L2, contain significantly greater

instances of particularly hedging devices than less-successful essays. For some interpersonal

resources, such as boosters and attitude markers, no significant differences were found. The

analysis also reveals that, unlike their L1 peers, ESL students were overwhelmingly reluctant to

establish an authorial identity in their writing. The paper concludes with a few implications for

L2 writing pedagogy.

Keywords:

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Academic writing; Argumentative essays; Interactional metadiscourse; Stance; Engagement

1. Introduction

One of the most crucial, yet challenging, features of successful student writing in university

settings is constructing a persuasive argument (Wingate, 2012). This is accomplished by

developing and defending a position; appealing to a reader’s logic and emotion; anticipating and

countering a reader’s reactions; and aligning with or distancing oneself from cited sources. Such

writing abilities in academia are primarily demonstrated in the argumentative essay, which is

considered to be “the most common...curriculum genre…that undergraduate students write”

(Wu, 2006, p. 330), particularly in the soft knowledge disciplines (Wingate, 2012) and non-

disciplinary first-year writing (FYW) courses in US universities (Aull & Lancaster, 2014).

Because of its importance in academic contexts, in addition to the struggle that most

university students encounter in writing it (Wingate, 2012), a growing number of studies have

examined different dimensions of university student-produced argumentative essays. Studies

have explored the concept of argumentation as perceived by instructors and students (e.g.,

Wingate, 2012), discourse structure of argumentative essays (e.g., Liu & Furneaux, 2014), as

well as patterns of lexico-grammatical aspects such as linking adverbials (e.g., Leedham & Cai,

2013) and phrasal and clausal level complexity features in these texts (e.g., Taguchi, Crawford,

& Wetzel, 2013). Although these textual and linguistic elements are obviously important in

constructing a cohesive and coherent essay, a key component of argumentative writing is the

capacity to develop and communicate a clear stance on a topic and to directly engage the reader

in the text (Aull & Lancaster, 2014; Hyland, 2005b; Wingate, 2012). These stance and

engagement elements, referred to as interactional metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005a), include hedges

(e.g., around, might), boosters (e.g., always, must), attitude markers (e.g., interesting,

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unfortunately), engagement markers (e.g., by the way, should), and self-mentions (e.g., I, my).

Through the considerate use of such interpersonal resources, a writer is able to explicitly convey

his or her affective position toward the content and reader, establish writer-reader rapport, and

ultimately construct a text that is regarded as effectively persuasive. According to Hyland

(2005a), these non-propositional features of texts are equally as essential as the propositional

content in constructing a cohesive, coherent, and compelling argument.

Research on interactional metadiscourse in student-produced texts has explored how

interpersonal discourse characteristics are realized in PhD dissertations and master’s theses (e.g.,

Hyland, 2004; Lee & Casal, 2014), undergraduate theses (e.g., Hyland, 2002a; 2005b), and texts

written for disciplinary courses (e.g., Li & Wharton, 2012; Wu, 2006, 2007). They have also

focused on high school exit exam essays (Hyland & Milton, 1997) and even young learners’

texts (Hong & Cao, 2014). Such investigations have been motivated by the need to create

evidence-based materials for both English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign

language (EFL) writing instruction (Hyland, 2005b; Li & Wharton, 2012). These studies have

examined students’ use of interactional metadiscourse across disciplines (e.g., Hyland, 2004,

2005b), learning contexts (e.g., Li & Wharton, 2012), lingua-cultures (e.g., Crismore,

Markkanen, & Steffenson, 1993; Lee & Casal, 2014) and genres (e.g., Hong & Cao, 2014), as

well as between first language (L1) and second language (L2) writers of English (e.g., Hyland &

Milton, 1997; Leedham, 2015). They show that metadiscoursal realizations vary across

educational levels, native language status, learning environments, lingua-culture, and text types.

They also underscore the crucial need to gain a better understanding of various student writers’

enactment of these elements in order to inform curricular developments and assist students in

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“effectively controlling interpersonal features…to building a convincing argument and creating

an effective text” (Hyland, 2005b, p. 364).

Previous studies have also investigated differences in the use of these interpersonal resources

between high-rated (A-grade or numerical equivalent) and low-rated (C-grade or below or

numerical equivalent) L2 student-generated essays (e.g., Intaraprawat & Steffensen, 1995; Wu,

2006, 2007). This line of research shows that high-rated essays tend to include far greater

interpersonal markers, especially hedges, attitude markers, and engagement markers, than low-

rated essays, as well as incorporate a broader range of lexico-grammatical realizations of these

stance and engagement dimensions. In contrast, low-rated essays have been found to display a

higher frequency of bare assertions, thus presenting arguments as facts, with minimal

consideration of counter-arguments or attempts to mitigate claims. Intaraprawat and Steffensen

(1995) and Wu (2007) contend that high-rated essays’ greater inclusion of such interactional

elements is an important contributing factor in the positive assessment of these essays. Similarly,

Wingate (2012) posits that these interpersonal components are “among the ‘hidden features’ of

academic writing…which have much impact on the success of writing” (p. 147).

However, comparing student essays that are markedly different (i.e., successful vs.

unsuccessful) in many ways masks the finer shades of how interactional metadiscoursal features

are enacted in academic writing. Comparisons of such distinctively contrastive essays may

conflate these interpersonal features with other aspects of low-rated texts, such as poor clausal-

and phrasal-level grammar, vocabulary, content, and organization, thus making it difficult to

determine the degree to which these stance and engagement features might actually impact

assessment decisions. In order to delineate the extent to which interactional metadiscourse may

affect the success of student writing, it would seem necessary to investigate how such differences

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might be realized between essays that are marginally different (i.e., A-graded vs. B-graded

essays). Such an examination would provide insights into L2 student writing that is neither

necessarily “problem writing” nor “target writing” (Ädel & Römer, 2012, p. 5) but rather

somewhere in between, and how L2 writing instructors may also better assist “near-target”

writers in gaining the rhetorical sophistication that their successful peers possess.

Furthermore, studies on interactional metadiscourse in both L1 and L2 university student

writing have mostly examined placement test essays, final-year undergraduate theses, and

discipline-oriented texts. Few studies have specifically focused on ESL undergraduate students’

use of interactive features in assessed argumentative essays written in the context of FYW

courses. In US universities, L1 and L2 undergraduate students receive writing instruction in

FYW courses, where they are taught general academic writing abilities necessary for successful

academic writing (Aull & Lancaster, 2014). As Aull and Lancaster observe, while “thousands

of…L1…and L2 students enter general writing courses and are assumed to transition into

university-level discourse” through FYW courses in the US, “we know little about what

discursive features might characterize argumentative texts produced” by these students (p. 153).

Therefore, limiting the analysis to placement, final-year, and discipline-oriented essays,

which differ in many ways from essays produced within FYW courses, does not adequately

provide evidence of how ESL university students in these classes use such interactional

resources in their writing. Such analyses also provide limited guidance for FYW writing

instructors in assisting ESL students at this stage in their linguistic and academic development.

Leedham (2015) contends that short essays written for placement or admission purposes are not

suitable representations of the types of assessed writing required of undergraduate students, as

they are decontextualized, artificial, and narrow in scope. Additionally, students who lack

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adequate background knowledge on the given topics are clearly at a serious disadvantage in

writing well-constructed essays within the time allotted. These types of essays also lack

references to source texts, which make it difficult for readers to distinguish between the writer’s

ideas and those of the referenced texts (Taguchi et al., 2013).

Additionally, metadiscourse research on L2 university student writing has mainly examined

heterogeneous L1 groups in ESL contexts (e.g., Intaraprawat & Steffensen, 1995) or

homogenous L1 groups in EFL situations (e.g., Hyland, 2005b; Wu, 2006, 2007). Few studies

have explored single L1 groups in ESL settings, although research has shown intergroup

heterogeneity among mixed L2 groups in terms of their metadiscoursal use (e.g., Hong & Cao,

2014). According to Leedham (2015), there is a concerted need to examine assessed, source-

based writing representing homogenous ESL groups in order to better understand how the

particular linguistic, cultural, and educational experiences of these individual groups of students

affect their use of interpersonal elements in academic writing. Specifically, with the growing

number of Chinese international undergraduate students in UK institutions, Leedham proposes

that much more research is needed to better understand the assessed writing produced by this

population. Similarly, the largest population of international students on US university campuses

comes from China (IIE, 2014). Exploring how Chinese undergraduate students use these

interpersonal discourse features in assessed texts would not only allow us to gain a deeper

appreciation of the stance and engagement elements used by such writers, but it would also

provide composition instructors with empirical evidence to better assist these specific ESL

student writers gain appropriate control over these resources. As numerous writing scholars have

pointed out, while L2 writing teachers often inform students that they need to clearly mark their

stance and engage readers in the text, explicit instruction on how students are to achieve this is

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often omitted from the curriculum (Hyland, 2005b; Intaraprawat & Steffensen, 1995; Li &

Wharton, 2012). Furthermore, because thoughtful use of these interpersonal resources is

considered to significantly impact the success of students’ argumentative writing in Anglophone

university contexts (Wingate, 2012), focus on the teaching and learning of these interactional

features is “urgently needed” (Hinkel, 2004, p. 314).

Therefore, this study reports on a corpus-based comparative analysis of the use of

interactional metadiscourse in successful and less-successful argumentative essays written by L1

Chinese university students in an ESL FYW course. Furthermore, the study compares the

interactional metadiscourse used in these ESL essays with those written by final-year L1 English

university students, who represent more realistically appropriate targets than published research

article (RA) writers (Aull & Lancaster, 2014). Understanding the ways in which stance and

engagement elements are realized in assessed L2 student argumentative essays earning

marginally different grades, and how each group compares with their successful L1 peers, can

provide important insights for L2 composition instruction. The study was guided by the

following research questions:

1. To what extent do successful and less-successful ESL argumentative essays differ in their

use of interactional metadiscourse?

2. To what extent do successful and less-successful ESL argumentative essays differ in their

use of interactional metadiscourse from high-rated L1 English argumentative essays?

2. Corpus and methodology

The study is based on 75 argumentative essays written by US-based Chinese ESL and

advanced L1 English university students, organized into three comparable corpora: 25 successful

(A-graded) papers (26,322 words), 25 less-successful ESL (B-graded) papers (26,046 words),

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and 25 successful L1 English (A-graded) argumentative essays (54,638 words). The A- and B-

graded ESL essays (henceforth ESLA and ESLB) included in this study are a subset of the

Corpus of Ohio Learner and Teacher English (COLTE) 1, a large corpus of ESL student and

teacher discourse at Ohio University. Both ESLA and ESLB essays were written by Chinese

ESL students enrolled in six different sections of the first of two courses in the FYW sequence,

specifically designed by the English Language Improvement Program (ELIP), in the Department

of Linguistics, for international undergraduate students and taught by L2 writing specialists. This

course is required only for those matriculated international students who have been placed into it

based on the TOEFL iBT writing section scores below 24, institutional intensive English

program’s (IEP) composition test score of 5 out of 62, and/or grade of B or higher in the IEP’s

advance composition course. Although students from various countries are represented in this

course and institution, the vast majority of the international student body is from mainland

China. This FYW course is designed to develop ESL students’ academic knowledge and skills in

organization, coherence, idea development, paraphrasing, summarizing, source use, grammar,

and vocabulary. Not only is the course intended to improve students’ general academic writing

abilities, but it also prepares students for the second course in the FYW sequence for both

international and multilingual students, thus fulfilling their institutional FYW requirement for

graduation.

The ESL student essays selected for this study were an assessed, source-based argumentative

essay assignment. Each student was expected to write an argumentative essay on an approved

1 The Corpus of Ohio Learner and Teacher English (COLTE) is an ongoing 5-year corpus project of the English used by ESL students and instructors currently being compiled by the Classroom Research Unit of the English Language Improvement Program (ELIP) in the Department of Linguistics at Ohio University. Since September 2013, we have collected thousands of samples of assessed ESL student writing and teacher electronic written feedback (e-feedback). After the collection period is completed, this corpus will be accessible freely via the World Wide Web.2 Students who earn a score of 6 on the institutional IEP composition test are placed into the second course in the FYW sequence specifically designed for international and multilingual students.

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topic, between 900 and 1,200 words, and to use at least four academic sources (formatted

according to APA style). In the essays that the study’s ESL students wrote, they argued for the

advantages and/or disadvantages or causes and/or effects of various concerns. The broad range of

topics on which the students wrote included issues related to technology (e.g., social media,

robotics), education (e.g., L2 learning, video games and learning), health (e.g., healthcare

system, Lasik surgery), society (e.g., video surveillance, gender inequality), economy (e.g.,

currency depreciation, recession), psychology (e.g., group dynamics, deception), military (e.g.,

military conflict, biochemical weapons), and environment (e.g., climate change, hybrid cars).

Following the process approach to writing pedagogy, the assignment stages include a

proposal, an outline, and three drafts. For each draft, teachers assess and provide electronic

written feedback (e-feedback) on different aspects of the essay based on a standardized grading

rubric that all teachers of this FYW course use. The rubric is used to assess student essays on

content, organization, source documentation, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics, but it does

not include any specific category related to interactional metadiscourse. On draft one, teachers

only focus on content and organization. For drafts two and three, teachers grade and provide e-

feedback on content, organization, source use, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. We

selected draft two for this study, as the essays were revised iterations of draft one based on e-

feedback received on content and organization but not on other writing dimensions. The 50

essays were assessed by three ESL writing teachers, all of whom had at least an MA in

TESOL/applied linguistics.

Table 1 provides descriptions of the successful and less-successful Chinese ESL students

from whom the A- and B-graded essays were drawn. As the table shows, both groups were of

similar age. However, it is interesting to note that the ESLA students resided almost a half a year

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longer in the US and received nearly a half a term of more English instruction in US IEPs than

their ESLB counterparts, but the ESLB group received a year of more English instruction in their

home country.

Table 1Descriptions of the two Chinese ESL university student groupsStudents Age Years of English

study in home country

Years of US residence

Terms in IEP

Grade %

ESLA Mean 21.7 8.00 1.96 4.00 93.06(n = 25) SD 1.46 2.80 0.85 1.89 2.73

Min 18.00 2.00 0.04 0.00 90Max 24.00 14.00 4.00 7.00 99

ESLB Mean 21.3 9.08 1.55 3.58 85.56(n = 25) SD 1.92 3.20 0.73 1.79 2.96

Min 19.00 2.00 0.25 0.00 80Max 26.00 16.00 3.00 6.00 89

Note. SD = standard deviation; Min = minimum value; Max = maximum value

These ESL essays were then compared to the 25 successful (A-graded) argumentative essays

produced by L1 English final-year undergraduate students from diverse disciplines. The purpose

of comparing the L1 and L2 essays was to examine the degree to which successful and less-

successful ESL students’ writing behaviors resemble or differ from those of successful, near-

peer, L1 student writers. The L1 papers were derived from the subset of argumentative essays of

the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP, 2009). MICUSP contains

approximately 2.6 million words of diverse A-graded student-produced papers across disciplines

and student levels at the University of Michigan (see Ädel & Römer, 2012, for details). Using

the filtering functions on MICUSP Simple (accessible at http://micusp.elicorpora.info/), we

searched for all argumentative essays written by native English speaking senior undergraduate

students. Although attempts were made to collect a balanced distribution of disciplines, several

factors impeded achieving this, including the fact that some disciplines (e.g., engineering,

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physics) are not well represented in MICUSP because they produce little assessed writing (Ädel

& Römer, 2012). Therefore, the search resulted in 101 argumentative essays written by L1

English senior undergraduate students mostly in the humanities and social sciences: economics

(1)3, education (1), English (48), history (6), linguistics (2), natural resources and environment

(3), nursing (3), philosophy (10), political science (14), psychology (6), and sociology (7).

For the purpose of this study, however, we excluded texts from philosophy and history for

two main reasons. First, international undergraduate students enrolled in US universities,

especially those from China, rarely major in these fields (IIE, 2014), and none of the study’s L2

writers were majoring in them at the time of data collection. Second, as Hyland (2002b)

observes, the rhetorical and argumentative style in some fields of humanities, such as philosophy

and history, are exceptionally different from other soft knowledge disciplines.

In addition to omitting essays from these two fields, we also excluded the following texts: (a)

the only education essay, which appeared to be actually responses to predetermined questions

(i.e., question-response); (b) nine political science essays related to legal cases or political

theory; (c) three psychology essays, two of which were analyses of a rock and roll band and a

single bilingual child in a published book, and one on what one student learned from a

psychology course; and (d) two sociology essays because one seemed to be a highly personal

essay and one was a critique essay on Ghandi. Lastly, we excluded most of the essays from

English, as nearly all of them were literary analyses written in the context of English literature

classes (e.g., analysis of James Joyce, Anna Karenina, William Faulkner, Shakespeare). None of

these essays seemed to be representative of the kinds of argumentative essays typically written

by the ESL students in the study’s FYW course for international students. Even though very few

international Chinese students major in English, we did include three essays from this discipline

3 The numbers in brackets represent the total number of texts for each discipline in MICUSP.

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because their topics were comparable to those that many international students in FYW write

such as technology, HIV, and education. After excluding these essays, the eventual L1 corpus

consisted of 25 MICUSP argumentative essays written by L1 senior undergraduate students on a

wide range of topics in economics (1), linguistics (2), English (3), natural resources and

environment (3), nursing (3), political science (5), psychology (3), and sociology (5).

The ESL essays were labeled according to the grades received and the order in which they

were collected (e.g., ‘ESLA-1’ for A-graded ESL essay #1), while we retained the original labels

for the MICUSP essays (e.g., ‘PSY.G0.12.1’ for Psychology, Final-Year Undergraduate). All

corpora were cleaned: names, paper titles, section headings, footers, and references were

removed. Table 2 presents descriptions of the study’s three corpora. As the table shows, ESLA

and ESLB paper lengths and tokens are about equal, while the length and tokens of the MICUSP

essays are double that of either ESL groups. This difference is partly due to ESL students’ being

restricted in length requirements (900-1,200 words), but the MICUSP writers may not have been

constrained. Nevertheless, as Leedham (2015) contends, “the-longer-the-better” assumption

often made in ESL writing research may be more applicable to short, timed, written tests than to

untimed essays written for actual courses, such as the present study’s papers. Therefore, even

though the MICUSP essays were twice as long as the ESL essays, we suggest that length is not

necessarily a major factor in the success of these kinds of assessed essays because the ESLA

group earned a high mark while the ESLB group, whose essays were of a similar length, did not.

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Table 2Descriptions of the three corpora

N Ave. length SD Range TokensESLA 25 1052.88 119.75 886-1316 26,322

ESLB 25 1041.84 112.09 795-1256 26,046

MICUSP 25 2185.52 1200.93 605-4434 54,638

Note. Ave. length = average essay length; SD = standard deviation; Range = minimum-maximum values

To analyze interpersonal features in the student essays, we used Hyland’s (2005a) model of

metadiscourse. Metadiscourse refers to the non-propositional aspect of communication that

writers use to organize the unfolding discourse for readers and to help them understand it in

particular ways. For Hyland, it is a “cover term for the self-reflexive expressions used to

negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assisting the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint

and engage with readers as members of a particularly community” (p. 37). While acknowledging

the challenge of distinguishing metadiscourse from propositional content, Hyland and Tse (2004)

point out that the “distinction between external and internal relations…is…clearly crucial to

determining the interpersonal (or metadiscoursal) from the ideational (propositional)” (p. 167).

External relations refer to activities, events, or processes in the real world (propositional content)

while internal references point to those within the discourse (metadiscourse). This interpersonal

model consists of two broad classifications: interactive and interactional metadiscourse.

Interactive metadiscourse includes textual devices used to organize and guide readers through a

text such as transitions, frame markers, code glosses, endophoric markers, and evidentials. In

contrast, interactional metadiscourse, the present study’s focus, includes linguistic markers that

writers use to explicitly convey their perspectives in the text and to directly engage with readers.

As Table 3 shows, enactment of stance and engagement features are accomplished through

hedges (qualifying statements), boosters (expressing certainty), self-mentions (referring to

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oneself), attitude markers (expressing affective positions toward propositions), and engagement

markers (including the audience and directing their focus in the text). Additionally, each

interactional metadiscoursal category was classified further into sub-functions delineated by

Hyland (1996, 1998, 2005a, 2005c) when applicable.

Table 3Interactional metadiscourse framework (based on Hyland, 2005a, p. 49)Category Function ExamplesHedges withhold commitment and open dialogue almost, appear, could, wouldBoosters emphasize certainty or close dialogue actually, certain, always, clearly Attitude markers express the writer’s attitude to proposition agree, prefer, usually, surprised Self-mentions explicit reference to the writer I, we, me, ourEngagement markers explicitly build relationship with the reader let’s, by the way, notice, must

Based on Hyland’s (2005a) framework, we used Antconc (v. 3.2.4, Anthony, 2011), a

commonly utilized text analysis and concordance tool, to identify all instances of interactional

metadiscourse in the three corpora. We searched electronically for every interactional

metadiscoursal item in Hyland’s (2005a, pp. 220-224) comprehensive list4 (see Appendix A).

Because potential metadiscourse items can function as either proposition or metadiscourse, each

instance was manually analyzed in its textual context in order to ensure that only items serving a

metadiscoursal (rather than propositional) function were included in the data, as Hyland

recommends. For instance, in Example 1, the adverb about functions as a hedge to indicate that

the precision in which the numerical information is provided is accurate enough (i.e.,

approximation) for the writer’s purpose, while in Example 2 the preposition about is used by the

writer to signal to readers that the subsequent proposition is in regards to rather than the

approximation of the adverse consequence of the Internet.

4 It should be noted that, while Hyland’s (2005a) list is comprehensive, he admits that “it may not be possible to capture every interpersonal feature or writer intention in a coding scheme and that any list of metadiscourse markers can only ever be partial....[and] can never achieve a comprehensive description” (p. 31) Nevertheless, the list provides a means to compare how these interpersonal devices are used, for example, across writers/speakers, genres, cultures, and communities.

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(1) According to Smith (2001), there are about 300,000 children in 80 different countries take part in armed conflicts, used as soldiers, spies, or porters. (ESLA-17)(2) However, there are many people who still complain about the negative effects that the Internet can have... (ESLB-7)

Items such as (2), which did not function as interactional metadiscourse, were excluded from the

analysis. Further, some items can serve dual functions; for example, must can function as a

booster to indicate certainty of possibility (3), or as a reader-directive engagement marker to

directly engage readers in the discourse (4):

(3) I’ve only been in this region for four years but I must have picked up something; might have been the way I said “beer”. (LIN.G0.02.1)(4) We must also reinvest in natural capital and work to undo the changes we have caused on the planet. (NRE.G0.11.1)

Finally, some metadiscoursal items appeared within quotes from external sources:

(5) Bickers…writes, “Graphix…is arguably the first imprint dedicated exclusively to graphic novels for kids…” (Bickers, 2007, 63). (ENG.G0.07.1)

In this example, arguably is used by the cited author rather the student writer. Items appearing

within such quotes were also omitted from the analysis. Examining each instance in context

allowed us to determine the specific function each item served and to exclude those items not

serving as interactional metadiscourse.

Each author worked independently to locate and analyze every interactional metadiscoursal

token within the three corpora, upon which the items were normalized to occurrences per 1,000

words (ptw). To establish interrater reliability, each author totaled the number of international

metadiscourse within essays in each corpus. Correlations (Spearman’s rho) between the two

authors were 0.95 for all three corpora, thus indicating extremely high interrater reliability. The

remaining discrepancies were averaged to obtain final frequencies. Statistical analysis was

performed using Chi-square test, a non-parametric test commonly used in corpus studies that

makes no assumption of normality (McEnery & Wilson, 2001). Using Chi-square tests, each

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interactional metadiscourse category and sub-category in the three corpora were compared to

determine whether the differences in the occurrences were statistically significant between

corpora (ESLA vs. ESLB; ESLA vs. MICUSP; and ESLB vs. MICUSP). The significance level

was established at p <0.05.

Results and discussion

Table 4 shows that interactional metadiscourse occurred quite frequently in all three corpora,

appearing more than once per every 50 words, similar to other studies on student writing (Hyland

& Milton, 1997; Li & Wharton, 2012). The L1 writers in the present study, overall, used more of

such interactional features in their writing than either of the ESL groups. As Table 5 shows,

while the ESLA writers used more interactional metadiscourse than the ESLB group, no

Table 4Frequency of interactional metadiscourse in the three corpora

ESLA ESLB MICUSPCategory Tokens Per 1,000

wordsTokens Per 1,000

wordsTokens Per 1,000

wordsHedges 280 10.63 218 8.37 639 11.70Boosters 128 4.86 124 4.76 217 3.97Attitude markers 84 3.19 96 3.68 161 2.95Self-mentions 6 0.23 20 0.77 115 2.10Engagement markers 133 5.05 128 4.91 294 5.38

Total 631 23.97 586 22.49 1426 26.10

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Table 5Statistical significance of interactional metadiscourse differences between corpora

ESLA-ESLB ESLA-MICUSP ESLB-MICUSPCategoryHedges 0.009 0.195 <.0001Boosters 0.920 0.077 0.119Attitude markers 0.371 0.597 0.094Self-mentions 0.010 <.0001 <.0001Engagement markers 0.863 0.584 0.420

Total 0.276 0.076 0.002

significant difference was found between the two groups. This indicates that, at least in terms of

overall usage, both successful and slightly less-successful ESL writers seem to be sensitive to the

need to mark their stance and connect with their intended readers within their texts. Additionally,

the difference between the MICUSP and ESLB groups was statistically significant, with L1

writers using substantially more of these interpersonal features in their writing. However, the

difference between the MICUSP and ESLA groups was not statistically significant. These

findings suggest that the ESLA writers’ overall command of interactional metadiscourse more

closely matched the writing behaviors of high-rated final-year L1 undergraduate students. It

seems to be the case that the study’s argumentative essays with greater inclusion of hedging

devices in particular (i.e., ESLA and MICUSP) were assessed more favorably than those essays

with fewer instances of such items (i.e., ESLB). This seems to support Hyland and Milton’s

(1997) and Wingate’s (2012) contention that interpersonal features may substantially influence

the assessment of student writing. In what follows, we present and discuss the results of each

interactional metadiscourse category in turn.

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4.1. Hedges

Among the five main interactional metadiscourse categories analyzed, all three student

groups used hedges the most frequently (see Table 4), similar to other L1 and L2 student-

generated texts (e.g., Li & Wharton, 2012) and published RAs (e.g., Hyland, 2005a). This

category constituted over 44% of all interactional metadiscourse in both the ESLA and MICUSP

essays, while the ESLB papers consisted of slightly above 37%. The high frequency of hedging

is perhaps expected, since demonstrating tentativeness and modesty in presenting an argument is

highly valued in Anglophone academic cultures (Li & Wharton, 2012). In such contexts,

developing a position in a “confidently uncertain” manner (Skelton, 1988) leads to the

construction of a text that “project[s] honesty, politeness, caution, and deference to the opinions

of others” (Hinkel, 2004, p. 327), and thus might be interpreted as being more persuasive. In

contrast, writers who tend to make bare assertions, or use fewer hedging devices, may often be

penalized by Anglophone university instructors5 (Wingate, 2012). As can be seen in Table 5,

both MICUSP essays (11.70 ptw) and ESLA papers (10.63 ptw) contained significantly higher

instances of hedges than ESLB papers (8.38 ptw), yet no significant difference was found

between the MICUSP and ESLA groups. These findings support Intaraprawat and Steffensen

(1995) and Wu (2007), who also found that high-rated L2 undergraduate essays included

substantially greater mitigation devices than lower-rated essays.

Based on Hyland’s (1996) taxonomy, we also examined different hedge sub-categories:

content- and reader-oriented hedges. Content-oriented hedges “concern a statement’s adequacy

conditions: the relationship between proposition and a representation of reality” (p. 439,

5 As one of the anonymous reviewers noted, it is important to take into consideration genre and disciplinary variation when discussing the use of hedges, as some disciplines may expect students to write in a rhetorical style that is both distant and less involved in certain genres (e.g., literary analysis essays in the context of English literature classes).

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emphasis in original). They, in turn, are categorized into accuracy- and writer-oriented hedges.

According to Hyland, accuracy-oriented hedges are used to hedge the accuracy, precision, and

reliability of the propositional content (e.g., generally, may, possible), while writer-oriented

hedges protect a writer against threats of contradiction by reducing the writer’s commitment to

the proposition (e.g., assume, appear, seem). On the other hand, reader-oriented hedges attend to

a statement’s “acceptability conditions,” or a statement’s acceptability to readers (Hyland, 1996,

p. 439, emphasis in original). They are those devices used to proactively attend to readers’

judgments and potential objections and to show deference and modesty (e.g., in my view, would).

Hyland (1998) admits that “all hedges are ‘writer-oriented’ in the sense that they function to

reduce the risk of claim negatability, but reader-oriented hedges anticipate this possibility by

addressing interpersonal rather than strictly epistemic issues” (p. 184). Further, Hyland (1996)

maintains that hedging devices are multifunctional; therefore, our analysis involved manually

examining each item in its textual context in order to determine its particular sub-category6.

As Table 6 shows, no statistically significant differences were found for content-oriented

hedges between the groups (ESLA: 9.19 ptw; MICUSP: 8.93 ptw; ESLB: 7.99 ptw). All three

groups primarily used accuracy-oriented (ESLA: 8.13 ptw; MICUSP: 7.45 ptw; ESLB: 6.68 ptw)

rather than writer-oriented hedges (ESLA: 1.06 ptw; MICUSP: 1.48 ptw; ESLB: 1.31 ptw) to

mitigate the certainty of their claims, via the modals may and could, similar to other student-

produced texts (Hyland, 2004):

(6) Lasik may produce short-term side effects in one year... (ESLA-7)(7) Microchips could help companies to keep track of their inventory... (ESLB-4)(8) While this is good for the city as a whole, it could disproportionately jeopardize the health and well-being of residents… (NRE.G0.03.1)

6 As Hyland (1996) emphasizes, hedging devices can serve multiple functions simultaneously, and “any classification scheme inevitably distorts reality by imposing hard and fast categories on the fluidity and indefiniteness of natural language use” (p. 449). Therefore, it is important to note that, in determining each hedging device’s sub-function, we chose to categorize each one based on the degree to which it most closely approximated the meaning of the sub-category within the textual context it was used.

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In these examples, the writers used these modals to demonstrate caution in representing the

confidence of their claims. These two modals comprised over 35% of all hedging devices in both

ESL groups and slightly more than 18% in the MICUSP papers. This difference suggest that,

while overall usage of content hedges may be similar between the L1 and L2 groups, this study’s

L2 writers’ linguistic range for indicating uncertainty of the content may be somewhat narrow.

Table 6Statistical significance of differences of hedge sub-categories between corpora

ESLA-ESLB ESLA-MICUSP ESLB-MICUSPSub-categoryContent-oriented Accuracy-oriented

0.1470.060

0.7400.320

0.1870.245

Writer-oriented 0.498 0.155 0.603Reader-oriented 0.0001 0.0004 <.0001

However, as shown in Table 6, significant differences were found between the groups for

reader-oriented hedges. The MICUSP group (2.76 ptw) included significantly greater instances

of these hedging devices than both ESL groups, and the ESLA writers (1.44 ptw) included

significantly more instances than the ESLB students (0.38 ptw), who used very few. While the

MICUSP writers used more of these hedge types, the difference between the ESL groups

suggests that ESLA writers, like the L1 writers, may be more cognizant of the need to moderate

potential reader disagreements, thus potentially gaining greater reader acceptance of their

arguments (Hyland, 1996, 1998). In the MICUSP group, such reader-oriented hedges were

primarily realized through the modal would (83.4% of reader-oriented hedges) while the two

modals should (52.6%) and would (39.5%) were most frequent in the ESLA group (totaling

92.1% of reader-oriented hedges):

(9) However, adopting a position on prohibition in-between our current position and legalization…would likely be a more optimal way of dealing with the problem. (ECO.G0.03.1)(10) These benefits show that wearing uniforms in school can benefit students, and parents and schools should consider these benefits. (ESLA-24).

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In both Examples 9 and 10, the writers use these reader-oriented hedges (would, should) to

soften the force of the proposals made in their efforts to anticipate readers’ potential objections,

and thus they avoid compelling readers, who may hold different viewpoints, to comply with their

insistence. Even though hedges are the most frequently used interactional resource among all

groups, it appears that the ESLA writers, parallel to the MICUSP group, exhibited greater

calculated uncertainty than the ESLB students in presenting their arguments and displayed

greater awareness of the inherent power asymmetries in student-teacher interaction (Lee &

Casal, 2014). Such demonstrated modesty could have been one crucial factor in the instructors’

evaluation of these successful essays.

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4.2. Boosters

Congruent with Li and Wharton’s (2012) findings of UK-based Chinese ESL undergraduate

student texts, we found that boosters appear much less frequently than hedges across all groups

(third ranked in the three corpora). In fact, boosters account for approximately 20% of all

interactional metadiscourse in both ESL groups, and this distribution resembles the L2 graduate

writers in Hyland’s (2004) study. In the MICUSP group, less than 16% of all such resources are

of this type, similar to published RAs (Hyland, 2005a). While these L1 writers employed fewer

boosters (3.97 ptw) than the ESLA (4.86 ptw) and ESLB (4.76 ptw) students, no significant

differences were found between the groups, as shown in Table 5. Contrasting Hyland and

Milton’s (1997), our findings suggest that, similar to the L1 writers, both ESL student groups

appear to have been aware of the need to construct their arguments with less conviction.

Table 7Statistical significance of differences of booster sub-categories between corpora

ESLA-ESLB ESLA-MICUSP ESLB-MICUSPSub-categoryEmphatics 0.718 0.229 0.099Amplifying adverbs 0.351 0.196 0.196

Also, among the booster sub-categories analyzed—emphatics (e.g., certain, find) and

amplifying adverbs (e.g., definitely, obviously)—no significant differences were found between

the groups, as shown in Table 7. All three groups utilized emphatics more frequently than

amplifying adverbs—more than 70% were emphatics. However, the specific expressions

employed were less similar. Among emphatics, the ESLA papers primarily used show, know, and

in fact (51.2%); the ESLB essays mostly utilized show, find, realize, and obvious (48.8%); and

the MICUSP group used find, show, demonstrate, clear, and true (49%):

(11) These reasons…show that people deceive for different reasons… (ESLA-25)(12) Jintai Lin…found that more than one-third of sulfur dioxide and around a quarter of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide emitted by China... (ESLB-8)

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(13) It is clear that while the EP is the only EU institution held directly accountable to the European people... (POL.G0.04.1)

All groups used fewer amplifying adverbs, with ESLB writers restricted mostly to always and

obviously (69%) and ESLA writers limited to always and definitely (71%), while the MICUSP

groups used a greater range: truly, clearly, certainly, always, and never (90%). This variation

among MICUSP writers shows that both ESL groups’ are somewhat limited in their linguistic

repertories for marking conviction (Hyland & Milton, 1997), at least at this stage in their

development. Nevertheless, none of the groups used this category frequently, thus indicating

their awareness to be rather non-committal to the propositions in argumentative essays.

Combined with their greater use of hedges, however, the successful L1 and L2 writers seem to

more effectively balance caution and certainty than less-successful L2 writers do, thus making

their essays inherently more persuasive.

4.3. Attitude markers

Similar to Li and Wharton (2012), attitude markers are among the least frequently used

interactional metadiscourse category in all three corpora, as shown in Table 4. Even though these

findings contrast with those obtained for RAs, where this resource is highly represented (Hyland,

2005c), they match those found in other types of student-generated texts (Hyland, 2004; Lee &

Casal, 2014). Furthermore, unlike Intaraprawat and Steffensen (1995), who found a huge

discrepancy between high-rated and low-rated essays, no significant differences were found

between the A-graded and B-graded groups in our study (ESLB: 3.68 ptw; ESLA: 3.19 ptw;

MICUSP: 2.95 ptw). This may indicate that, as opposed to students with contrastively disparate

writing abilities (i.e., high-rated vs. low-rated), students with slightly varying proficiencies do

not display great differences in marking their attitudes in their writing.

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Table 8Statistical significance of differences of attitude marker sub-categories between corpora

ESLA-ESLB ESLA-MICUSP ESLB-MICUSPSub-categoryAttitude verbs 0.080 1.000 0.084Sentence adverbs 0.269 0.729 0.380Adjectives 0.393 0.351 0.036

Examining the sub-categories (attitude verbs, sentence adverbs, and adjectives) also resulted

in no significant differences between the groups (Table 8). Adjectives, however, were the most

frequent sub-category used, but they were mostly limited to important in all three groups:

(14) Recycling of bags is an important action for protecting the environment. (ESLA-9)

Among the sentence adverbs, all three groups utilized even X most frequently.

(15) ART has given millions of women who would not have had the opportunity before to have children who they can call genetically their own to an even greater degree than ever before. (NUR.G0.17.1)

As mentioned above, RA writers frequently express their attitudes toward propositional content.

Hyland (2005c) explains that “[b]y signaling an assumption of shared attitudes, values and

reactions to material, writers both express a position and pull readers into a conspiracy of

agreement so that it can often be difficult to dispute these judgments” (p. 180). Despite this,

attitude markers were extremely infrequent in the three corpora. This may be suggestive of

undergraduate students’ general discomfort with and tension in explicitly marking personal

attitudes in assessed writing. It may also be the case that the study’s L1 and L2 writers might

have perceived these overt insertions of their affective positions as signifying subjectivity rather

than objectivity, which may conflict with their notion of academic writing. Still, the limited

usage of these markers of attitude in the student texts did not seem to have much of an effect on

the evaluation of their writing.

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4.4. Self-mentions

Previous studies have found that L2 student-produced texts include far fewer self-mentions

than RAs (Hyland, 2002a) and L1 essays (Leedham, 2015). In the present study, this resource

was the least frequently used category in both L1 and L2 essays, but we found statistically

significant differences among the groups (see Table 5). As expected, the L1 writers (2.10 ptw)

used self-mentions the most, supporting Leedham’s (2015) findings. However, as shown in

Table 5, the ESLB group (0.77 ptw) referred to themselves significantly more frequently

(p=0.010) than the ESLA writers (0.23 ptw). In all three corpora, I and my encompassed most of

the self-mentions; the exclusive-we was nearly absent in all three groups. It is, however,

important to note that, in the ESL texts, two student writers used most of the personal pronouns.

Half of the six instances in the ESLA essays were found in one writer’s paper, while three other

writers used my once each. Within the ESLB group, one writer exploited nearly two-thirds of the

20 tokens, mostly in a short narrative in the essay’s introduction (16):

(16) I woke up with ringing of my alarm from my iPhone. Then I checked the weather and email and started my day. During my class, I used my laptop to record notes. After class I found my homework over Blackboard, and finished it with Microsoft Office. My life is tightly connected to technology products… (ESLB-4)

The remaining first person pronouns in the ESLB corpus were distributed across three other

writers, with one writer using it five times and the two other students using it twice and once,

respectively. This narrow distribution indicates that pronoun usage among these L2 writers was

not widespread but rather idiosyncratic. There may be a few possible explanations for the near

absence of a rhetorical self in the ESL texts. First, Hyland (2002a) explains that East Asian

students tend to be reluctant to use first person singular pronouns in academic texts, partly due to

their cultural ways of viewing the self. Another likely reason for such exclusion may be that L2

student writers are generally taught to avoid these pronouns, as their inclusion are perceived as

25

informal, personal, subjective, and inappropriate in academic writing (Hyland, 2004). These

misperceptions are sometimes further reinforced by teachers, who may also have misconceptions

or a “vague” understanding of academic writing (Wingate, 2012). Because the near absence of

self-mentions did not appear to affect these essays’ evaluation, we may posit that the grades the

ESLA group earned seem to support this view, thus perhaps further strengthening students’

misperceptions. However, the greater presence of self-mentions in the MICUSP essays perhaps

highlights L1 students’ tacit understanding of the important value placed on authorial identity in

Anglophone academic writing contexts. Despite the considerable amount of academic English

instruction the ESL students received in Anglo-American institutions, the lack of explicit

authorial presence appears to reflect the powerful impact that teachers’ instruction and students’

prior learning experiences may have on students’ beliefs about academic writing (Leedham &

Cai, 2013).

4.5. Engagement markers

Hyland (2005b) contends that the use of engagement markers is the most overt “indication of

a writer’s dialogic awareness” of texts and readers (p. 365). Through the use of such devices, a

writer brings readers into the text as “real” discourse participants. This resource was the second

most frequent interactional metadiscourse used in all three corpora. In fact, for all three groups,

about 21% of all interactional metadiscourse was comprised of engagement markers, and, similar

to Li and Wharton (2012), no significant differences were found between the groups (MICUSP:

5.38 ptw; ESLA: 5.05 ptw; ESLB: 4.91 ptw), as shown in Table 5. Further, our findings are

comparable to those of RAs (Hyland, 2005a), though the texts we examined are of different

genres and from student writers. This appears to indicate that the students in our study,

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irrespective of academic levels, grades, or first languages, recognized the social nature of writing

and the importance of engaging the reader in the text.

However, upon examining the sub-categories of engagement markers, we found some

statistically significant differences for reader pronouns (e.g., inclusive-we, you), questions, and

directives (e.g., note, must), as Table 9 shows. Among these sub-functions, reader pronouns were

the most frequently utilized in all groups. Still, both ESLB (2.80 ptw) and ESLA (2.77 ptw)

students used significantly fewer pronouns than MICUSP writers (4.03 ptw). In fact, the L1

essays contained copious amounts of inclusive-we, our, and us:

(17) Our children will thank us for this investment we make in their learning in their test scores and love of learning. (PSY.G0.10.2)

Perhaps, as L1 students composing texts within their own country, culture, and discipline, these

advanced writers may have sensed a stronger connection to the perceived shared knowledge and

experience with readers, unlike the ESL groups who may have felt less of such shared values in

texts written in an L2 for a writing course in a foreign culture. It is also possible that the

potentially misleading instruction from instructors in regards to avoiding self-mentions, as

discussed above, may have inadvertently transferred over to students’ use of reader pronouns as

well, as these L2 writers may not yet perceive the difference between inclusive- and exclusive-

we.

Table 9Statistical significance of differences of engagement marker sub-categories between corpora

ESLA-ESLB ESLA-MICUSP ESLB-MICUSPSub-categoryReader pronouns 1.000 0.007 0.008Questions 0.010 0.480 0.039Directives 0.655 0.131 0.001 Imperatives 0.617 0.863 0.502 Obligation modals 0.427 0.069 <.0001

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Both ESLA (0.42 ptw) and MICUSP writers (0.29 ptw) used significantly more questions

than the ESLB writers (0.04 ptw):

(18) As the price of fuel increases, who doesn’t want to save money on the fuel? (ESLA-8)(19) Is the poor's plight a purposeful result of others' actions or just an accidental consequence of progress? (SOC.G0.05.2)

Rhetorical interrogatives allow writers to engage directly with readers by focusing their attention

on specific key points in the writer’s line of argumentation. They not only “help to create rapport

and intimacy” with readers, but they also “create the illusion that [a writer’s] text is responding

to…statements made or questions asked by others” (Lafuente-Millán, 2014, p. 217).

Nevertheless, like other student-generated texts (e.g., Hyland, 2005b), the present study’s writers

made few uses of questions overall in their writing.

Dissimilar to the student texts in Hyland (2002b, 2005b), directives were the second most

commonly used engagement markers in all three groups. As shown in Table 9, the ESLB writers

(2.07 ptw) used this category significantly more commonly than MICUSP students (1.06 ptw),

but no significant differences were found between the MICUSP writers and ESLA students (1.48

ptw) or between ESL groups. Among directives, all writers rarely used imperatives (e.g., see,

note, consider). Hyland (2002b) states that imperatives are the “most imposing” and “risky”

directive type, as these lexical verbs explicitly direct readers to perform some action. He further

notes that student writers seldom use them, and they are more frequently found in hard sciences.

In line with Hyland, most directives used in all student groups were obligation modals. Among

these modal types, the ESL groups primarily used should:

(20) …we should strengthen environment protection awareness as soon as possible… (ESLB-1)

In Example 20, the writer uses should with the inclusive-we to directly draw the reader in the

discourse to perform a collective action, while assuming that the reader would agree. The

MICUSP writers also used should, but must was more frequent:

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(21) With the threat of bird flu initiating a global pandemic, we must begin devoting more resources towards making these environments more hospitable. (POL.G0.09.1)

Hyland (2002b) explains that must invokes a “strong sense of personal obligation” and places

greater imposition on readers while should “convey[s] something closer to an advisable,

unbinding course of action,” and is thus considered less face-threatening (p. 228).

This contrast in the usage of modals between the L1 and L2 writers is suggestive of the

greater authority perceived by L1 English writers than ESL students. It may point to ESL

students’ hypersensitivity of the power asymmetry between themselves and their teachers, who

are perceived to have a greater command of academic writing, and who, of course, grade their

work. For this reason, the exclusive use of should in their writing might be illustrative of these

ESL students’ uneasiness with placing strong obligation on readers. Another possible

explanation for this contrast could be that the study’s L2 writers may be less aware of the relative

differences in meaning, usage, and impact on readers between must and should. Yet, the ESLB

writer’s more frequent employment of directives overall indicates their lack of control in

attending to readers’ negative face compared with the L1 and ESLA students. When we combine

this with the significantly lower occurrences of hedges (particularly reader-oriented hedges) in

the ESLB essays, we may conclude that these essays might have been perceived by ESL teachers

to place greater imposition on them than the ESLA papers did in threatening their negative face

(Lafuente-Millán, 2014). Therefore, such writing might have been considered ultimately less

persuasive than the successful essays.

Concluding remarks

In this study, we explored the extent to which successful and less-successful (i.e., A- and B-

graded) argumentative essays written by Chinese ESL university students differ in their use of

interactional metadiscourse, as well as how these ESL student writers compare with high-rated

29

L1 students. While a causal relationship between the use of interpersonal devices and evaluation

is difficult to establish, this comparative analysis provides evidence of the importance of such

features in successful argumentative essays. Supporting previous studies (e.g., Intaraprawat &

Steffensen, 1995; Wingate, 2012; Wu, 2006, 2007), the results suggest that the use of these

resources in argumentative essays may have a crucial effect on how ESL student essays are

assessed. The findings indicate that the distribution of these interactional aspects in successful

ESL essays more closely resemble those found in high-rated L1 essays, thus showing a strong

relationship between interactional metadiscourse and effective persuasion (Hyland, 1996, 2005a,

2005b). The greater inclusion of particularly hedges in successful essays appears to lead to them

being considered ultimately more persuasive than less-successful essays, as such devices are

highly valued in Anglophone academic cultures (Li & Wharton, 2012). However, unlike L1

writers, the findings also reveal the overwhelming resistance of both ESL groups to demarcate

their authorial presence within their texts. This reluctance may indicate Chinese ESL students’

discomfort with taking on a stronger writer identity, and instead preferring to maintain an

impersonal and detached writing style that may be considered safe and familiar.

Before concluding, a few limitations need to be pointed out. First, the sizes of the corpora are

relatively small. Second, we only examined interpersonal variation among A- and B-graded

Chinese ESL essays within an FYW course at one institution. It would be worth exploring a

larger corpus of Chinese undergraduate student writing, or other homogenous ESL group texts,

paper grades, and institutional settings to investigate the differences in the employment of

interactional metadiscourse in assessed ESL writing across varying proficiency levels.

Additionally, this study compared L2 argumentative essays written within an FYW course for

international students and essays written for disciplinary courses by L1 senior undergraduates.

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Although all attempts were made at striking a balance in choosing essays across several

disciplines in MICUSP, it is still likely that expectations of disciplinary readers played an

important role in shaping the construction, including the use of stance and engagement features,

of the selected L1 texts, unlike the ESL essays where such disciplinary expectations may not

have impacted the texts produced7. As Hyland (2004, 2005a, 2005c), for example, has

consistently argued, discipline and rhetorical practice are intimately linked. Future research

could thus compare metadiscourse variability not only between MICUSP and ESL corpora but

also within MICUSP (L1 and L2) or other L1-L2 mixed student corpora, such as the British

Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus, to tease out the degree to which discipline impacts

the use of metadiscourse in undergraduate writing. Furthermore, recognizing methodological

limitations, the results need to be understood with some caution. It is important to understand

that metadiscoursal items are nested within the text. This source of covariance must be accounted

for in the data. Future studies could use mixed-effects models, particularly binomial mixed-effect

regression, that treat each item as a separate observation but take into account the fact that

observations within a single text are not independent8. Such an analysis may lead to greater

precision of results. Lastly, this study did not include teacher perspectives on whether the

frequency of interactional resources in any way affected how the student texts were assessed.

Therefore, future studies could combine corpus analysis of student essays with text-based

interviews with writing instructors. Such investigations would shed light on the extent to which

interactional features in student writing actually influence teachers’ conscious grading decisions.

To conclude, some pedagogical implications for the writing instruction of L2 undergraduate

students can be drawn from these findings. As numerous writing scholars have repeatedly

7 The authors would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for calling our attention to this important point.8 The authors would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this methodological insight.

31

advocated, there is a concerted need for more direct instruction on interactional metadiscourse in

writing courses designed specifically for L2 students (Hyland, 2005b; Li & Wharton, 2012;

Thompson, 2001). ESL writing teachers frequently tell students that writing is a dialogic,

interactive, and social activity, and that their texts must talk to their readers. Yet, as Hyland

(2005b) rightly points out, “explicit instruction in the ways this is achieved is often neglected in

advanced writing classes or subordinated to a focus on informational aspects of writing” (p. 364).

Supporting Hyland, we contend that, if ESL writing teachers are serious about assisting students

in gaining control over these interpersonal resources in their writing, they need to place greater

emphasis on stance and engagement aspects in the curriculum and create various learning

opportunities to raise students’ awareness of these features and to instruct students on how to use

them strategically and considerately in academic writing. Before teachers can do this, however,

we propose that writing instructors must also gain a more sufficient understanding of the

characteristics of argumentation and the interpersonal features central to the construction of an

effective argument (Wingate, 2012). Additionally, writing instructors would need to consistently

provide students with feedback on their attempts in evaluating material and interacting with the

reader, as well as enhancing their lexico-grammatical repertoires for effective “dialogic

interaction” (Thompson, 2001). Making these pervasive yet “hidden” dimensions of persuasive

writing explicitly visible in ESL composition classes would enable all students, but especially

“poor” and “near-target” writers, to mark their stance more mindfully and engage with readers

more meaningfully in their effort to construct effectively persuasive texts. Doing so would

permit teachers to not only discuss the importance of establishing a writer’s voice and engaging

in a dialogue with readers, but, more importantly, it would also assist students in developing the

rhetorical sophistication necessary to perform interactively in academic writing.

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Appendix A

Interactional metadiscourse items investigated (adapted from Hyland, 2005a, pp. 220-224)

HedgesContent-oriented: Accuracy-oriented

about, almost, apparent, apparently, approximately, around, broadly, certain amount, certain extent, certain level, could, couldn’t, could not, doubt, doubtful, essentially, estimate, estimated, fairly, frequently, generally, guess, in general, in most cases, in most instances, kind of, largely, likely, mainly, may, maybe, might, mostly, often, on the whole, perhaps, plausible, plausibly, possible, possibly, presumable, presumably, probable, probably, quite, rather X, relatively, roughly, slightly, sometimes, somewhat, tend to, tended to, typical, typically uncertain, uncertainty, unclear, unclearly, unlikely, usually

Content-oriented: Writer-orientedargue, argued, appear, appeared, assume, assumed, claim, claimed, indicate, indicated, postulate, postulated, seem, seemed, suggest, suggested, suppose, supposed, suspect, suspected

Reader-orientedbelieve, believed, feel, felt, from my perspective, from our perspective, from this perspective, in my opinion, in our opinion, in my view, in our view, in this view, ought, should, think, thought, to my knowledge, would, wouldn’t, would not

BoostersEmphatics

actually, beyond doubt, certain, clear, definite, demonstrate, demonstrated, doubtless, establish, established, evident, find, found, in fact, incontestable, incontrovertible, indeed, indisputable, know, known, must (possibility), no doubt, obvious, of course, prove(s), proved, realize, realized, really, show, showed, shown, sure, truly, true, undeniable, without doubt, without a doubt

Amplifying adverbsalways, certainly, clearly, conclusively, decidedly, definitely, evidently, incontestably, incontrovertibly, indisputably, never, obviously, surely, undeniably, undisputedly, undoubtedly

Attitude markersAttitude verbs

agree, agreed, disagree, disagreed, expect, expected, prefer, preferred

Sentence adverbsadmittedly, amazingly, appropriately, astonishingly, correctly, curiously, desirably, disappointingly, dramatically, essentially, expectedly, even X, fortunately, hopefully,

33

importantly, inappropriately, interestingly, preferably, remarkably, shockingly, strikingly, surprisingly, unbelievably, understandably, unexpectedly, unfortunately, unusually

Adjectivesamazed, amazing, appropriate, astonished, astonishing, curious, desirable, disappointed, disappointing, dramatic, essential, expected, fortunate, hopeful, important, inappropriate, interesting, preferable, preferred, remarkable, shocked, striking, surprised, surprising, unbelievable, understandable, unexpected, unfortunate, unusual, usual

Self-mentionsI, me, my, mine, our, us, we, the author, the author’s, the researcher, the researcher’s, the writer, the writer’s

Engagement markersReader pronouns

let us, let’s, one’s, our, (the) reader, us, we, you, your

Interjectionsby the way, incidentally, key

Questions?

Directives: Imperativesadd, allow, analyze, apply, arrange, assess, assume, calculate, choose, classify, compare, connect, consider, consult, contrast, define, demonstrate, do not, don’t, develop, employ, ensure, estimate, evaluate, find, follow, go, imagine, increase, input, insert, integrate, let x=y, look at, measure, mount, note, notice, observe, order, pay, picture, prepare, recall, recover, refer, regard, remember, remove, review, see, select, set, show, suppose, state, think about, think of, turn, use

Directives: Obligation modalshave to, must, need to, ought, should

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