Case Study 1 - the A+ Paper
This case study selects an effective research-based paper graded A+ from a student writer to investigate its successful establishment of the research warrant with the frequency and the prosody of the attitudinal values across the generic stages.
The effective paper shows a similar trend in encoding attitudinal resources at each generic stage, except at the introduction stage, that the resources are sufficiently maintained at the generic stages, and the adjustment in attitudinal distribution from one stage to another is moderate. The attitudinal distribution of the A+ paper across the stages is compared to that of the effective paper corpus (EPC), as shown in the following table:
Institutionalisation of personalised comments on the object of study into judgement and appreciation is evident throughout all the sections of the effective paper, with a trace of affect values (seven instances) encoding participants’ emotion responses to the proposed teaching approach at the results and discussion stage.
Despite the disparity in the attitudinal density at the introduction stage between the effective paper and the EPC, the student writer was able to initiate the positive prosody with inscribed Appreciation in significant appraising the background of study about the change of teaching approach with genre-based approach. The positive value propagates across the subsequent phase of text, augmented with more instances of inscribed positive attitude values ultimate goal, enabling and make a success. The positive notion of genre-based approach was summarised with the positive appraisal of scaffolding by teachers as vital, radiating the positive attitude retrospectively in the phase of text.
| The tradition of approach in teaching writing has experienced a significant change after the occurrence of genre-based pedagogy (Paltridge, 2004). This approach, based on systemic-functional linguistics(Halliday; 1978, 1994; Martin, 1984, 1999; Martin & Rothery, 1980; Martin & Rose; 2005; 2008) and Vygotsky’s social development theory (Vygotsky, 1986), makes its ultimate goal as enabling the learners to write the educational genres of texts so that they can make a success in society (Mahboob & Dreyfus & Humphrey & Martin, 2011). (…) [T]eacher’s scaffolding plays a vital role in genre-based teaching. |
The length of the introduction stage of this effective paper may contribute to the low density of attitudinal patterning; however, strategic positing of the attitude in the hyper-Theme and hyper-New to predict and consolidate evaluative meanings across the phase respectively, as it amplifies the prosody with positive attitudinal values and other Appraisal resources (e.g. graduation, which is out of the scope of this study), ultimately constructing a high intensity of positive stance towards the background of study to highlight the significance of study.
The argument and evaluation with attitudinal prosodies are effectively spread and maintained at the other generic stages in the effective paper with the placement of the attitudinal lexis similar to the example above, contributing to the cohesiveness of the attitudinal stance across the stages in the paper (Lemke, 1998; Hood, 2006).
The absence of Affect resources at the subsequent stages except the results and discussion stage reveals the strategic distancing from personal evaluation through the preference of placement of Appreciation and Judgement values in the student writers’ argument and observation. The Affect values in the Results and Discussions stage are all non-authorial, reflecting on the emotional responses of the students towards the genre-based approach, as well as on the teachers’ choice adopt the pedagogic approach.
The instances as exemplified in (a) and (b) could have been written as (a’) and (b’) deploying institutionalisation and nominalisation to achieve an academic register, but as the writer were reporting on the teaching process in the classroom in this section, appropriating affect values for representation of the students’ response from the observer’s perspective would be regarded as acceptable.
| (a) | From students’ response, it is easy to find that students were well involved [+aff] and interested [+aff]. They answered the question in a relatively positive manner and laughed [+aff] after the teacher’s joking question in the end. |
| (a') | Students’ adequate involvement [+app] and interest [+app] was noted from their positive response and merriment [+app] towards the teachers’ joking question in the end. |
| (b) | The pie chart above demonstrates that in modelling a text, the teacher preferred [+aff] referential question the most. |
| (b') | The pie chart above demonstrates teachers’ preference [+app] over referential question in modelling a text. |
This effective paper has demonstrated some significant features in constructing a critical voice in support of the writer’s argument. They include the dynamic flow of the attitudinal density varies according to the functions of the generic stages to either negotiate readers’ alignment with the writers’ argument, and is maintained at a considerably high density across the stages. The lexico-grammatical resources realising the attitudinal types are mostly institutionalised as appreciation, with a varied choice of its sub-types, in order to evaluate the object of study with objectivity. Moreover, the attitudinal values are meticulously patterned and posited in the hyper-Theme and hyper-New to establish a prosody that propagates across the phase of text to maintain the cohesive links of the appraisal of the object of study.