The Development of Stance-taking Strategies in L2 Students’ Academic Essays: the Case of a Content-based Russian-American Teleconference Course

Abstract

Due to internationalization of education, students in the majority of leading Russian universities are increasingly likely to use English as a medium of instruction. At the same time, they are not offered preparatory courses in English academic writing. As a result, students are able to develop their academic writing skills mainly while undertaking content-based courses. Recent research indicates that one of the major concerns for novice writers is to be able to express their stance. The key aim of the study is to show that implementing some methods of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) into a content-based course might improve students’ ability to take a stance in their writing. The paper presents the analysis of 45 essays written in English by L2 novice writers during a teleconference course taught to a group of Russian and American students. The study employs a comparative linguistic analysis of some stance markers (pronoun ‘I’, reporting verbs, epistemic modal and evidential expressions) used in students’ essays written at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the course. The results suggest that the students’ ability to take a stance might be developed through the integration into the course of some elements of EAP teaching.