This document discusses attitudinal patterning in effective MA research papers and the pedagogical implications. It analyzes a corpus of student papers to identify patterns in the use of attitude across different sections. Effective papers were found to have higher density of appreciation and distribute attitude strategically. Less effective papers lacked control of attitude and revealed subjective voice. A case study compares an A+ and D paper, finding the high-scoring paper propagated attitude systematically while the low paper disrupted attitudinal patterning. The findings suggest explicit instruction in incorporating attitude to establish academic criticality. A website on writing literature reviews was proposed to support student academic writing development.

1. 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

2. Acknowledgements
PolyU Departmental Teaching & Learning Grant
MAELT students who have particpated

3. Background

4. 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)

5. 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)

6. 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?

8. Frequency words
related to “critical”
Lexeme Frequency Lexeme Frequency
reflect 34 opinion 8
judge 32 perspective
7 (related word:
angle – 1
instance)
analyse 18 argue 9
accept
10 (collocated
with “not” or
“easily”)
alternative 5
question 7 selective 2

9. 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)

10. 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)

11. Aim of the study
to develop materials to support
“academic literacy”
i.e. students effective writing of MA
papers

12. 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”

13. Previous research works

14. 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?

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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)

19. judgement & appreciation as
institutionalised affect
Affect
Appreciation
Judgement
feeling institutionalised as propositions
aesthetics or value (criteria & assessment)
moral or ethics (criteria & assessment)
feeling institutionalised as proposals
Martin & White (2005, p. 45)

20. 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)

21. 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

22. Methodology

23. 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)

24. Structural Patterns of
Research Articles
(Lin & Evans, 2012)
Generic Stages Remarks
Stage 1 – Introduction Value and significance
Stage 2 – Literature Review Related research in the field of study
Stage 3 – Methodology Including Data, Participants (optional)
Stage 4 – Results and Discussion Including Analysis of Results
Stage 5 – Conclusion
Including Implication, Suggestions,
Limitations, Future research, etc.

25. 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

26. Findings & Analysis

27. 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.

28. Effective research paper

29. attitudinal density across the effective
papers

30. 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

31. 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.

32. 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].

33. 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.

34. Less effective research papers

35. attitudinal density across the less
effective papers

36. attitudinal density across the effective
papers

37. 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...

38. 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

39. Case study
COMPARISON BETWEEN AN A+ & A D PAPER

40. attitudinal density across ELT0015A+

41. 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

42. 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

43. 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

44. attitudinal density across ELT0007D

45. justifying the low grade
regarding 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

46. 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

47. 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

48. 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

49. Limitations &
pedagogical implications

50. 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.

51. 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

52. 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

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

54. References

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58. Thank you very much.