A Comparative Analysis Of Use Of Stance Markers By English Majors In Their Oral And Written Productions Prompted With The Same Topic

This study was intended to investigate the use of stance markers in English Majors’oral and written productions triggered by the same topic. On the basis of the description of the general characteristics of stance markers used in both oral and written productions, comparisons across the learners’oral and written productions and across different proficiency levels were made to examine the differences in use of different types of stance markers.The spoken data conducted for analysis was extracted from the subcorpus of SWECCL, from which60cases were selected and re-grouped into18high-level and18low-level cases according to the junior English majors’oral performances on the testing task of talking on a given topic. The written part was collected from60compositions on the same topic by junior English majors in a timed condition. Likewise, the written data were divided into high-level and low-level groups based on their performances. The classification of stance markers by Biber et al (1999) was adopted as the analytical framework for this study, and the stance markers were classified into three major types, namely, stance modals, stance adverbials and stance complements. Stance modals were subdivided into modals and semi-modals, stance adverbials into single adverbs and prepositional phrases, and verb complements, noun complements and adjective complements subordinate to stance complements. The major findings yielded in the study generated the following major findings:Firstly, the learners’use of stance markers identified account for10.56%of the total word number in their oral productions. Of all the identified stance markers, stance modals were most frequently used while stance adverbials were comparatively less used. Of all the subtypes of stance markers, modals were the learners’first choice in expressing their stances and noun complements were seldom used.The independent-samples t-test analysis reveals that there is a significant difference in the frequency of stance markers between the high-level and low-level groups in their oral compositions. However, no remarkable difference was found across the two groups in the distribution of types of stance markers except for the use of adjective complements. The high-level learners’preference to or awareness of using adjective complements may be considered as one of the explicit indicators to the cross-level difference in making comments on a given topic.Secondly, the learners’use of stance markers identified account for9.87%of the total word number in written productions. Similar to the use of stance markers in oral productions, stance modals enjoy the highest frequency of use but stance complements were comparatively less used. In terms of their subtypes, common modals were used most frequently and noun complements least.The independent-samples t-test analysis indicates that there is no significant difference in the frequency of stance markers between high-level and low-level groups in their writings, but there are statistically significant differences in the distribution of types of stance markers represented by single adverbs and noun complements, which suggests that high-level learners have more stance markers at their disposal when required to express stances. The possible explanation for such a result may go to high-level learners’awareness of lexical variety in expressing stances.Finally, as shown in the independent-samples t-test analysis conducted between oral and written productions, the difference in the frequency of use of stance markers reaches a statistically significant level. In terms of the distribution of specific types of stance markers, oral productions were disparate from written ones in varying degrees and significant differences were found in all types of stance markers except modals and adjective complements, indicating that the learners had a strong tendency to use semi-modals, single adverbs, prepositional phrases and noun complements in their writings in contrast to the overuse of verb complements in oral compositions. Such an obvious difference may be simply related to register differences and different time limits for speaking and writing tasks.The findings yielded in this study have some pedagogical implications. From the learners’ perspective, the proper use of stance expression may help make their arguments more convincing and pointing. From the teachers’perspective, it is advisable to adopt the use of stance markers in the language assessment, and therefore, in the practice of teaching, EFL learners’awareness should be raised of distinctive features of stance markers in each register and encourage learners to resort to a richer repertoire of stance markers so as to improve discourse competence.