Published papers

Direct quotation (DQ) use varies considerably across disciplines, from complete absence in hard sciences to relative frequency in social sciences. This study investigates DQs in literature, focusing on PhD thesis introductions in English. A corpus of 15 introductions tagged for move-and-step genre analysis was used to investigate DQ frequency, their distribution in the rhetorical structure of introductions, and source text types used for DQs. The findings show that (i) DQs are the most common source use practice in the corpus; (ii) DQs are concentrated in three rhetorical steps: reviewing previous research, presenting the analysed literary work, and making topic generalisations; and (iii) source text type used for DQs is associated with specific rhetorical steps. These findings suggest that DQs are essential for the realisation of the rhetorical purpose of the steps which carry them and for knowledge construction in literature PhD theses.

© 2018, EQUINOX PUBLISHING. Writing about historical change involves advancing causal explanations that show how events impact people and how their emotions contribute to historical outcomes such as wars and revolutions. This study uses Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework to examine how the language of emotion (Affect), an overlooked feature of historical discourse, is used by L2 writers of an under-examined genre, the Factorial Explanation. The study was conducted in a content-based, political-history course for 63 upper-intermediate learners of English at a Japanese university. Results show that while writers made extensive use of the Affect categories Positive Inclination and Negative Satisfaction, which were often realized as adjectives and verbs, nominal formulations for building cohesion were infrequent. Writers also tended to intensify Affect resources by construing feelings as static attributes rather than destabilizing forces of change. The paper makes recommendations for teaching genre-specific language features to aid learners in construing the emotion of history.

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. This paper explores the evaluative language used in high- and low-graded historical biography essays in a CLIL-based university course. The biography genre, marked by an inductive informational structure where authors’ views becomes apparent only after evidence is presented, is a discourse-type that has received less attention in the literature than deductively-patterned argumentative genres. The study examines explicit evaluations in the genre's concluding stage and implicit realizations used as evidence in support of them, providing insight into the underlying rhetorical mechanisms that enable evaluations of historical actors to appear to arise ‘naturally’ from a seemingly dispassionate set of facts. The study found little difference between high- and low-graded essays in their preferences for evaluative subtypes (e.g., ethics/competence-based judgments) and no difference in their selections of positive/negative loadings. The findings suggest that what is more important than the types of evaluations writers use is how evidence is mobilized in support of them and how it is assimilated with evaluations in particular grammar patterns. A pedagogical framework, called ‘FACTS’ is proposed to familiarize writers with options for presenting evidence in support of claims and develop a deeper understanding of how evidence and evaluation collaborate to advance writers’ views.

© 2019, The Author(s). Background: In our research project, we have developed a scoring rubric for a second language (L2) summary writing for English as a foreign language (EFL) students in Japanese universities. This study aimed to examine the applicability of our five-dimensional rubric, which features both analytic and holistic assessments, to classrooms in the EFL context. The examination especially focused on a newly added, optional overall quality dimension and two paraphrasing dimensions: paraphrase (quantity) and paraphrase (quality). Methods: Six teacher raters evaluated 16 summaries written by Japanese EFL university student writers using our new rubric. The scoring results were quantitatively compared with the scoring results of a commonly used rubric developed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). For the qualitative examination, the teacher raters’ retrospective comments on our five-dimensional rubric were analyzed. Results: The quantitative examination demonstrated positive results as follows: (a) adding the optional overall quality dimension improved the reliability of our rubric, (b) the overall quality dimension worked well even if it was used alone, (c) our rubric and the ETS holistic rubric overlapped moderately as L2 summary writing assessments, and (d) the two paraphrasing dimensions covered similar but different aspects of paraphrasing. However, the quantitative analysis using the generalizability theory (G theory) simulated that the reliability (generalizability coefficients) of the rubric was not high when the number of raters decreased. The qualitative examination of the raters’ perceptions of our rubric generally confirmed the quantitative results. Conclusion: This study confirmed the applicability of our rubric to EFL classrooms. This new type of rating scale can be characterized as a “hybrid” approach that offers the user a choice of analytic and holistic measures depending on individual purposes, which can enhance teachers’ explicit instructions.