A Study On The Use Of Stance Markers In Argumentative Writing By Chinese EFL Learners

Argumentative writing is one of the most common genres in tests at home and abroad.However,it is not easy for most English learners to make effective arguments.Stance markers are one of main characteristics which express authors' emotion and attitudes.Numerous studies have focused on academic writing.Few studies concerned with stance markers were conducted to analyze argumentative writing.This study attempts to explore the distribution of stance markers in argumentative essays written by Chinese EFL learners and differences of variety and frequency in argumentative essays of high-score and low-score groups.This study collected 121 argumentative essays written by sophomores majoring in English in a university in central China.According to the same rubric(Qin,2013),these essays were classified into high-score and low-score groups,with 54 argumentative essays in the high-score group and 31 argumentative essays in the low-score group.Based on Hyland's(2005)classification,the stance markers in the introductory,body and concluding parts of these argumentative essays were coded.Then the statistical results were analyzed by SPSS 17.At the same time,by comparison with a sub-corpus of The Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays(ICLE-US-MICH-0001.1-45.1),the study analyzed the use of stance markers in argumentative writing written by Chinese English major students.The results showed that four types(attitude markers,boosters,hedges and self-mention)of stance markers were all included in the introductory,body and concluding paragraphs.However,the number and variety of stance markers used in essays of high-score group was significantly higher than that in the low-score group.Moreover,significant differences were found in the use of hedges,attitude markers and self-mention.Students in the high-score group showed a preference for hedges in introductory,body and concluding paragraphs while writers of the low-score group tended to express their attitudes in a more assertive tone and project themselves in the text.What's more,overuse of modal verbs and fixed sentence patterns were found in the essays of the low-score group.