The use of stance in L2 first-year college writing Its relation to genre, revision, and writer characteristics

The present study investigates the use of stance in a corpus of 2,328 second language (L2) English essays collected from a first-year undergraduate writing course in a US university. Using Biber's (2006a) lexico-grammatical stance framework, variation in using stance markers was examined by genres (i.e., synthesis, argumentative essay), revision (drafts), writer characteristics (i.e., writing proficiency, linguistic background), and essay quality (i.e., lexical diversity, sophistication, essay length). Multilevel modelling analyses revealed a significant association with genres, showing more stance features used in argumentative essays than in syntheses, but few changes over revision. Regarding the effect of writers' first language, speakers of South Asian languages used in India applied significantly fewer stance features than Korean or Chinese speakers, but the significance was due to statistical power. The effect of writing proficiency was not significant. Among the essay quality measures examined, only lexical sophistication significantly explained variance in overall frequencies. Follow-up descriptive analyses indicated a lack of diversity in stance markers that L2 students employed, with heavy reliance on modal verbs and that-complements controlled by verbs across genres and drafts. However, as lexical sophistication increased, stance marking was more diverse. The findings suggest the pedagogical need for teaching genre-based stance use to enhance L2 developing writers' academic written communication.