Investigating ESL Students’ Timed Essays for Mainstream Composition Class Placement : Insights From Appraisal Theory

Abstract

This study investigates timed writing among English as a Second Language (ESL) students that was used to place the students into mainstream composition courses in a U.S. academic institution. The student essays were analyzed using Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework evolved within a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) paradigm. Data consist of graded timed essays written by twelve ESL students representing five different countries (China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam). This analysis was compared with written comments by the institution’s first language (L1) compositionist (the first?year writing program director, the so?called “gatekeeper”). The results, similar to major appraisal research findings (Hood, 2006; Lee, 2007), reveal distinctive differences in the utilization of appraisal resources between students with passing grades and those with failing grades. In addition, subtle differences were found between students with passing grades and those with borderline passing grades in their use of explicit versus implicit values of ATTITUDE resources within the appraisal system. The study concludes with pedagogical as well as theoretical implications of appraisal theory that are potentially valuable tools to facilitate L2 writing and research.