Investigating EFL Learners’ Engagement in Writing Research Papers

Abstract

This study explores voices from an Appraisal Theory perspective (Martin & White, 2005). It aims to investigate how novice English as a Foreign Language (EFL) research writers deploy Engagement resources to review existing literature in the field. The study is based on a corpus of literature reviews from 25 research articles written by Thai undergraduate students enrolled in a research report writing class. Findings show that the writers demonstrated a strong preference to engage readers in the writers’ justification of knowledge. The results revealed that Entertain, Acknowledge, and Counter resources were most often used in the articles. By contrast, novice research writers, to some extent, convince readers of their perspectives by using bare assertions without reference to other voices. It may be assumed that second language (L2) novice research writers are aware of the need to engage with readers and to strategically construe dialogic divergences in their written works.