(Un)attended this/these in undergraduate student writing: A corpus analysis of high- and low-rated L2 writers

Abstract

This study reports findings of a comparative analysis of the use of (un)attended this/these in high- and low-rated L2 university student argumentative essays. Specifically, the analysis systematically compares the frequencies, antecedents, verb patterns, and attending noun stance options of (un)attended this/these in 174 assessed essays written by Chinese ESL undergraduate students in a first-year composition course, grouped into high- and low-rated essays. Results reveal that high- and low-rated L2 students use this/these in different ways to establish rhetorical cohesion in building their arguments. Both groups tend to employ attended this/these more frequently, but the low-rated essays include significantly more unattended this/these. The low group relies more on copular verbs and phrasal antecedents, but the high group prefers lexical verbs and clausal/extended discoursal referents; however, with unattended this/these, both groups use copular and lexical verbs equally and the antecedents are predominantly clausal/extended discoursal referents. These two groups of student writers also select different types of stance options for attending nouns, especially in relation to the antecedent referents to which this/these plus noun indicates. We conclude with pedagogical implications for ESL composition instruction.