Does EAP affect written L2 academic stance? A longitudinal learner corpus study

This study explores the longitudinal development of L2 academic 'stance' features resulting from instruction in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at a university in Hong Kong. We analysed the frequency and wordings of hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mention within a 205,682 word longitudinal corpus of essays and reports collected over a semester's instruction via pre-, mid- and post-instruction submissions, alongside data on submission grade. Data was analysed for frequency and wording differences alongside mixed-effect models to confirm the impact of instruction on the data. Results show significant longitudinal variation in the frequency of hedging, boosting, marking attitude and self-mention devices as the result of instruction, with a rise in the use of hedging and an overall reduction in the use of boosting and self-mention, serving to leave students with a more careful, narrower, less polarising and less personal range of expressions with which to convey their stance over time. We also present longitudinal genre-specific effects on stance features between essays and reports, and show how a longitudinal increase in hedges and boosters results in texts that receive a higher grade from teacher-raters. Our findings recommend explicit instruction of stance features as crucial in raising students' awareness of how to achieve persuasive academic writing.