A Matter Of Facts L2 Writers Use Of Evidence And Evaluation In Biographical Essays

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Journal of Second Language Writing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jslw
A matter of facts: L2 writers’ use of evidence and evaluation in
biographical essays
Gordon Myskow
⁎
, Masumi Ono
Department of Law and Political Science, Keio University, 4-1-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa 2238521, Japan
A R T I C L E I N F O
Keywords:
L2 writing
Appraisal
History
Biography
CLIL
Grammar patterns
A B S T R A C T
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 in-
formational 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 under-
lying 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/compe-
tence-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.
1. Introduction
Evaluative language is an area of growing interest among L2 writing researchers of academic writing (e.g., Coffin & Hewings,
2004; Lee, 2006, 2010, 2015; Liu, 2013; Liu & Thompson, 2009; Lv, 2015; McCabe & Whittaker, 2017; Miller, Mitchell, & Pessoa,
2014, 2016; Morton & Llinares, 2016; Myskow & Ono, in press; Ngo & Unsworth, 2015; Pessoa, Mitchell, & Miller, 2017; Wu &
Allison, 2003). Studies have used Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework—a method of analysis grounded in the Systemic
Functional Linguistics (SFL) tradition—to examine different types of explicit evaluations or “Attitude” that writers use, including
Judgments of people, expressions of emotion, and Appreciation of ‘things’. Much of this research has been focused on cataloguing the
different types of explicit Appraisal resources used by writers and comparing their use among high- and low-graded argumentative
essays.
Far less attention has been devoted to examining how writers use implicit evaluation, or what Martin and White (2005) refer to as
invoked Attitude, in the evidence they provide for their claims. These evaluations play an especially critical role in inductively-
patterned discourse, including the Recording genres of history where evaluations are offered only after an apparently disinterested,
‘factual’ reporting of events. Unlike deductively structured genres that foreground explicit attitudinal inscriptions and make use of
argumentative language (e.g., hedges, boosters, concessions) to advance the writer’s claims, recording genres rely on a dispassionate
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2018.08.002
Received 15 March 2018; Received in revised form 6 August 2018; Accepted 6 August 2018
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: gordon@keio.jp (G. Myskow), ono.m@keio.jp (M. Ono).
Journal of Second Language Writing 41 (2018) 55–70
1060-3743/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
T

record of events and an accumulation of implicit evaluation throughout that position readers covertly to align with the writer’s
conclusions. It is not yet clear, however, how writers successfully (and unsuccessfully) present evidence that invokes or ‘gives way to’
conclusions where explicit evaluations “appear to emerge naturally from recorded events” (Coffin, 2006, p. 55).
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that explicit evaluations do not occur in isolation and that grammatical
patterning or ‘co-text’ plays a critical role in realizing evaluative meanings. In a key work on evaluation and grammar patterning,
Hunston (2011) concludes that “it is the pattern as much as the adjective itself that construes evaluative meaning” (p. 134). Hunston
and Su (2017) and Su and Hunston’s (in press) recent corpus-based work on Attitude provides a great deal of insight into the
particular ways evaluative meanings are patterned in grammar, showing, for example, how adjectives that construe emotion tend to
be realized in particular grammatical constructions (e.g., eager to) that differ from other types of evaluations, such as judgments of
people (e.g., successful in) and appreciations of things (necessary for). How L2 writers employ such evaluative grammar patterns and
whether they differ in high- and low-graded essays is an area in need of further research.
The present study builds on existing literature by comparing L2 writers’ use of evaluative language in high- and low-graded
biographical essays—an under-examined history genre marked by an inductive rhetorical pattern. It explores not only the types of
evaluations writers use but the ways evidence is marshalled in support of them and how seemingly neutral or factual records of events
invoke evaluations, priming readers to align with the writer’s claims (see Martin & White, 2005 for a discussion of invoked eva-
luation). A pedagogical framework (FACTS) is proposed for familiarizing students with the particular ways evidence is assembled to
invoke explicit evaluative meanings. Key rhetorical sequences identified in the data set for effectively patterning evidence (ACT and
CAT) are also presented. The paper also looks at how particular grammatical patterns are used to integrate evidence with evaluations
at the clausal level. Pedagogical activities are suggested to familiarize learners with the connections between evidence and eva-
luation, and the language used to realize them.
2. Literature review
2.1. Appraisal framework
Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework provides a means of categorizing a diverse range of evaluative language features,
classifying them in three broad semantic regions: Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. The Attitude network of Appraisal, which is
of principle concern in the present study, deals with “mapping feelings as they are construed in English texts” (Martin & White, 2005,
p. 42). It is comprised of three broad subsystems: Affect (construal of emotion), Judgment (the evaluation of people), and Appre-
ciation (the evaluation of things). Each of these semantic regions is further elaborated in Martin and White (2005) to provide a more
fine-grained textual analysis. Affect is subdivided into feelings of Inclination (want/ dread), Satisfaction (content/angry), Happiness
(glad/sad) and Security (relaxed/ frightened).
An important distinction in the Judgment system is between Social Sanction—the high-stakes, ethics-oriented evaluations of
Propriety (principled/immoral) and Veracity (honest/untrustworthy)—and Social Esteem, which is concerned with lower-stakes judg-
ments of one’s Tenacity (hardworking/lazy), Capacity (smart, incompetent), and Normality (popular/strange). Realizations of each
subsystem of Appraisal operate on a positive (+) or negative (-) polarity (e.g., brave: + Tenacity; deceitful: - Veracity). All Attitude
subcategories from Martin and White (2005) are displayed in Table 1 along with sample positive and negative realizations from the
corpus used in the present study.
Martin and White (2005) show how different types of Attitude can be construed directly as explicit inscriptions—typically by
adjectives (e.g., a heroic/cowardly person; a rewarding/tedious job)—or indirectly as invoked tokens vis-à-vis a much wider range of
language features, some of which are difficult to categorize in isolation. The sentence ‘she worked from morning to night nearly every
day’, for example, does not rely on any particular attitudinal resources to evaluate. Nonetheless, the statement communicates an
implicit Judgment—one of perhaps positive Tenacity, or negative Normality depending on whether the reader views her work habits
as industrious and ambitious or excessive and unhealthy. When used together with explicit evaluations (e.g., hardworking/unusual),
such implicit realizations can function to provide support for explicit claims, thus working collaboratively with them to advance the
writer’s position (see Don, 2016; Hood, 2006; Macken-Horarik, 2003; White, 2011 for discussions of the process of invocation in
Appraisal).
2.2. Appraisal and L2 academic writing
Appraisal resources in L2 academic writing have been researched extensively (Derewianka, 2007; Humphrey, 2015; Isaac, 2012;
Lee, 2006, 2010, 2015; Liu, 2013; Liu & McCabe, 2018; Lv, 2015; McCabe & Whittaker, 2017, Miller et al., 2014, 2016; Wu & Allison,
2003). There appears to be broad agreement regarding the general Appraisal categories deployed in particular genres. For example,
arguing genres tend to rely heavily on the Engagement system to incorporate other competing views toward the subject-matter
(Miller et al., 2014, 2016). Moreover, these genres rarely use the emotional language of Affect to report the writer’s own feelings
(e.g., Lee, 2006; Liu, 2013) and instead draw heavily on the Appreciation region of Attitude (e.g., Lee, 2006; Liu & McCabe, 2018),
indicating a preference for performing evaluations about ‘things’ and entities rather than people (Judgment) and their emotions
(Affect) (see Myskow and Ono (in press) for a discussion of Affect in historical explanation essays).
In a recent large-scale study by Liu and McCabe (2018) comparing the use of Appraisal resources in argumentative essays
composed by various groups of writers, including L1 and L2 students, the authors found a higher frequency of Appreciation across all
groups. As Liu and McCabe (2018) also note, however, writers’ choices of Appraisal resources may be constrained not only by the
G. Myskow, M. Ono Journal of Second Language Writing 41 (2018) 55–70
56

genre they are writing in but the writing topic as well as the cultural context where the writing takes place. The authors conclude that
such factors may help to explain some variation in findings among different studies (Liu & McCabe, 2018, p. 94).
One area of variation among studies has been findings related to the particular Attitude subcategories deployed in high- and low-
graded essays (HGEs and LGEs). A recent study of secondary-school history essays by McCabe and Whittaker (2017) found that the
more highly evaluated texts not only included lower-stakes judgments of Social Esteem (i.e., Tenacity, Capacity and Normality), but
“developed to a greater extent the semantic space of propriety” (p. 116). On the other hand, Lee’s (2006) study comparing high- and
low-rated persuasive essays on a rather different, non-history-related topic, found a stronger association between LGEs and inscribed
Propriety (p. 264). According to Lee (2006), HGEs showed a preference for ethics-oriented evaluations that are less direct and implicit
than LGEs.
Research examining the use of positive and negative realizations of Attitude has also produced some varying results. Lee’s (2006)
study comparing high- and low-rated persuasive essays found that “HGEs contain fewer negatives” and that “[f]or successful writers,
negative meanings are de-emphasised” (p. 274). The author explains that stronger writers tend to avoid potentially contentious,
negative evaluations, and frame their conclusions in more constructive terms, showing a “confidence in others…interest and help-
fulness” (p. 274). A recent study by Lv (2015), however, produced different findings. According to Lv’s comparison of argumentative
essays written by “native and non-native” undergraduate students, the “native” group showed a stronger preference for negative over
positive loadings than the “non-native” writers (p. 818). The author even seems to suggest that negatively-charged evaluative lan-
guage should be targeted by teachers for instruction, stating that “EFL learners’ deficiency in…expressing negative and polarizing
meanings may hinder their capacity in critical thinking involved in argumentative writing tasks” (Lv, 2015, p. 818).
Wu and Allison’s (2003) early work in this area, however, takes a more ambivalent view of the relationship between Attitude
resources and the quality of academic writing. The authors conclude that different types of attitude may “contribute to, but do not
actually determine, the overall success of an essay within an institutional context” and point to the need for “a great deal more
research on a wider range of writers and text types” (p. 84). Up to now, research has been mostly focused on argumentative text-types
with a deductive rhetorical structure. There is a dearth of literature investigating inductive genres, such as the Biographical Recount,
which delay evaluation of the subject-matter until evidence (i.e., the Record-of-Events) has been presented.
2.3. The biographical recount genre
Coffin’s (2002, 2006) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) work on the genres of school history provides much insight into the
language features of written genres L1 students are expected to produce at different stages of schooling. According to Coffin (2006, p.
58), the purpose of the Biographical Recount—a genre that belongs to a larger family of Recording Genres—is to retell or record
important events in a person’s life. Unlike the explaining and arguing genres that do not rely on a timeline for their informational
Table 1
Appraisal Resources and Sample Realizations in L2 Writers’ Biographical Reports.
Appraisal Resources Polarity Sample Realizationsa
Affect (emotion)
Inclination + hoped…wanted…desire
– tired…hesitant…unmotivated
Satisfaction + proud…content…relieved
– angry…disappointed…unsatisfied
Security + safety…security…calm
– shocked…concern…tension
Happiness + glad…enjoy…admired
– depression…hardship…suffered
Judgment (of people)
Social Esteem Normality + famous…memorable…important
– radical…controversial…unpopular
Capacity + brilliant…competent…talent
– inferior… failure…lack of ability
Tenacity + active…bold…brave
– passive…stubborn…aggressively
Social Sanction Veracity + straightforward…sincere…candid
– untrustworthy…deceitful…hypocritical
Propriety + respectable…honored…well-behaved
– corrupt…bad…racist
Appreciation (of things)
Reaction + amazing…wonderful…beautiful
– difficult…terrible…horrible
Composition + justifiable…firm…consistent
– illegal…weak…problematic
Valuation + significant…important…irreplaceable
– crippling…mysterious…impossible
a
Due to the small number of realizations in some Attitude subcategories, sample realizations that do not appear in the corpus have been added to
the following: -Inclination, + Satisfaction and +/- Veracity.
57

structure, the Biographical Recount (and other Recording Genres) conforms to a ‘linearized’ informational structure, where time is
“the main organizing principle” (Coffin, 2006, p. 58). Coffin (2006) breaks down the Biographical Recount into three stages: (1) an
Orientation that “locates the person in time and space”, (2) a Record of Events stage or “sequencing of events as they unfolded over
time” and an optional Evaluation of Person stage that “draw[s] out historical significance of person’s life” (p. 54) (see Appendix A
for an example of the Biographical Recount from the data set of the present study).
According to Coffin (2006) the Appraisal resources of inscribed Judgment are especially critical in the final Evaluation of Person
stage, where “judgments are made that appear to emerge naturally from recorded events” (p. 55). Thus, the genre is marked by a
move from implicit evaluation in the Record of Events stage to its explicit realization in the Evaluation of Person stage. This eva-
luatively-charged concluding stage “involves reasoning and is more analytical in style” and thus, “[i]ts inclusion is highly valued by
history teachers” (Coffin, 2006, p. 54). While Coffin’s research has done much to illuminate the types of evaluations and their
locations at different stages of the genre, what is less clear is the relationship between explicit and implicit (invoked) evaluation—that
is, how judgments in the final stage are made to ‘emerge naturally from recorded events’ (see Haskell, 1998 and White, 1987 for a
detailed discussion of these issues from the perspective of historiography).
One issue with implicit-explicit evaluative connections is that implicit realizations are sometimes dependent on explicit ones for
their evaluative meaning. In the aforementioned example, ‘she worked from morning to night nearly every day’, it is unclear whether or
not this ‘statement of fact’ suggests a positive or negative evaluation of her working habits. However, when coupled with an explicit,
positive evaluation such as ‘hardworking’ or a negative one like ‘obsessive’, the reader is able to infuse a seemingly neutral ob-
servation with evaluative meaning. This suggests a problem of circularity where invoked evaluations are evidence for an evaluation if
the evaluation determines they are evidence—a problem summed up in Macken-Horarik’s (2003) observation that “the coupling of
so-called neutral messages with heavily appraised ones puts the less attitudinal ones into an evaluative schema if only because of the
‘company these words keep’” (p. 314). Another issue is that invoked tokens can be realized by a wide variety of language features,
making it challenging for teachers to illuminate for students the specific ways implicit realizations in the Record-of-Events Stage may
invoke explicit judgments in the Evaluation-of-Person Stage. As White (2011) acknowledges, “considerably more research is required
in order to provide a systematic account of the mechanisms by which this process of ‘invocation’ operates” (p. 18). A pedagogical
model for illuminating the ways evidence is used in support of evaluations and the specific types of language at stake in this
collaboration between implicit and explicit attitudinal realizations would go a long way to helping teachers make these connections
clearer for learners.
2.4. Evaluative language patterns
Another feature of evaluative language that has been largely overlooked in L2 writing literature is the association between
attitudinal meanings and their patterning in language. Canonical patterns for realizing adjectives—key conveyors of inscribed at-
titudinal meaning—are predicates (e.g., he is disingenuous) and attributes (e.g., a disingenuous politician). However, recent research by
Su and Hunston (in press) examining adjectival patterns in a corpus of biographical material shows that expert writers utilize a
diverse range of adjectival patterns (see also Hunston & Su, 2017). These include the ADJ towards in the invented example:
[1] He was aggressive towards his political adversaries.
More complex constructions include the it v-link ADJ of n to-inf in
[2] It was irresponsible of him to incite violence in the crowd.
Unlike attribute and predicate-type adjectival patterns, the ADJ towards formulation in [1] contains a syntactic mechanism for
narrowing the scope of the evaluation—an element Hunston and Su (2017) refer to as a “Specifier” (p. 14). That he was aggressive
towards a specific group (political adversaries) suggests the negative judgment may not be a personality trait but a behavioral one. This
mechanism permits writers greater evaluative precision by restricting the scope of their judgments. As Su and Hunston (in press)
observe, “an individual [attitudinal] item only has meaning potential and that potential becomes specific when it occurs in specific
patterns” (pp. 4–5). The more complex formulation in [2] goes further by providing a reason or explanation (inciting violence in the
crowd) for his being judged irresponsible. Thus, this construction seems to embed or meld together both explicit evaluation (opinion)
and implicit, invoked attitude (reasons/evidence) into a single syntactic unit. The extent to which these patterns are used by L2
writers and whether or not they correlate more strongly with high-graded essays is an open question and one in need of further
research.
2.5. Research questions
This paper takes up these issues by investigating the evaluative language used by L2 university-level writers of an under-examined
genre, the Biographical Recount (see Coffin, 2006 for a discussion of this genre in an L1 setting). It uses both quantitative and
qualitative methods to examine explicit and implicit attitudinal features of high-graded essays (HGEs) and low-graded essays (LGEs).
Our research questions explore the extent to which these two groups of essays differ with respect to:
1) The frequencies of Attitude categories (Affect, Judgment, Appreciation) and their subcategories.
2) The interaction between explicit (inscribed) evaluation and implicit (invoked) realizations.
3) The language patterns by which explicit evaluative meanings are realized.
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3. Methods and materials
3.1. Teaching and research context
The study was carried out in a first-year CLIL-based English course in the Department of Law and Political Science at a university
in Japan. Classes were conducted in English and held once a week for thirty sessions over the academic year, each lasting 90 min. The
course forms part of the department’s English Intensive Program—a rigorous two-year English academic-skills certificate program
that is comprised of four courses in each year (see Myskow & Ono, in press for more information about the educational context).
The course, taught by one of the researchers, is titled Social Issues and Popular Culture in Modern World History1
. It covers the
period from the end of the Second World War to the present, exploring socioeconomic, cultural and political developments with
special attention to the interrelationship among them. Much of the content focuses on the US experience during this time, but
important events in other nations are also discussed. This content was selected because of its relevance to the students’ major (Law
and Politics), and perceived interest to them. Also, as many of the students plan to visit or study abroad in the US and other English-
speaking countries, the content was thought to be well-suited to them.
3.2. Participants
The 62 students (34 female and 28 male) who were enrolled in the course in 2015 Spring Semester (April–July) took part in the
study2
. All students spoke Japanese as their first language, a part from one who was raised in China. Students were divided into four
classes that study the same course material at different times of the week. The Quick Placement Test (UCLES, 2001) was administered
at the beginning of the semester to measure students’ English ability. The mean score was 40.19 (a full mark is 60), which suggests an
upper-intermediate English proficiency level, or a Level B2 in the Common European Framework (see Language Links, 2018 for a
score conversion table).
As students in the Intensive Course choose to take twice the number of English courses as other students in the department, they
tend to be highly motivated to learn English. According to a questionnaire administered at the beginning of the course, nearly half of
students (46%) planned to study abroad during their time at the university. The survey also found that only five percent had studied
in a foreign country for more than one year and 87% had either no experience abroad or experience of less than a month.
3.3. Procedures and materials
The Biographical Recount genre was selected as the main writing task in the first semester of the course (see Appendix A for an
example of the Biographical Recount from the data set of the present study). It was the first genre covered in the course because, as a
Recording genre that is typically taught in earlier years of schooling in L1 contexts (Coffin, 2006), it was considered less challenging
than explaining and arguing genres. Students were told to choose one historical figure connected to the events and issues of the era
covered in the first semester of the course (1940 s–1980 s). Historical figures selected as subjects of the essays ranged from political
leaders (e.g., Richard Nixon and Ho Chi Minh) to civil rights activists (e.g., Malcolm X and Gloria Steinem). Students were told that
successful essays are generally between 250–300 words. In total, the corpus consisted of 62 essays with approximately 18,440 words
(300 words per essay).
As the purpose of this study was not to assess how writers may or may not benefit from particular pedagogical interventions—but
rather to compare the evaluative resources used by L2 writers in high- and low-graded essays—we wanted to avoid providing too
much direction for students when writing their essays. In particular, we did not explicitly teach evaluative language resources (e.g.,
options for construing Judgment and Appreciation) that are associated with the biography genre (Coffin, 2006). However, we also
thought it was important to ensure that students wrote their essays in accordance with the generic pattern of the biographical essay,
and not, for example, an explanation genre examining the reasons for a historical actor’s behavior. Thus, instruction was limited to
outlining the aforementioned key rhetorical stages of the biography genre (Orientation, Record of Events, and Evaluation) (see
Coffin, 2006, p. 54). This was done by providing students with a sample essay (written by the instructor) that clearly identified each
stage of the genre. Using an overhead, the instructor presented the genre stages, explaining how each stage is illustrated in the sample
essay.
Students were required to write their essays under time constraints (approximately 40 min) as part of the in-class final exam of the
course. Though they were not allowed access to references or dictionaries while writing, they had time outside of class to prepare
their essays. Prior to the test, many students appeared to be studying drafts or notes that they had prepared out of class. The reason
students wrote their essays in class rather than as out-of-class assignments is mainly related to local contextual factors of course and
program design. At the time, there was a perceived need in the program to develop students’ writing and speaking speed, especially as
many students indicated they would need to take standardized tests such as the TOEFL as part of their preparations for studying
abroad, which requires them to perform communicative tasks under time constraints.
For preparing the content of their essays, students were directed to use the course textbook. The text, called US History Pre-
Columbian to the New Millenium, is part of the ushistory.org website—a free online educational resource created by the nonprofit
1
Both researchers of the present study teach courses in the program.
2
All data was collected within institutional guidelines and all participants signed informed consent forms.
59

corporation Independence Hall Association that provides a wealth of information on key historical events and people. Though this is a
digital resource, it resembles a traditional textbook in its use of a core narrative to chronicle events as they unfolded over time.
Information about the life of various historical actors is interspersed throughout the various sections of the book. For example, details
about the actions of Richard Nixon appear across a number of sections under titles such as “McCarthyism”, “The Election of 1960″,
“1968: Year of Unraveling”, “Triangular Diplomacy”, “Environmental Reform”, “Undoing a President” (i.e., Watergate) as well as
numerous sections on the Vietnam War and Anti-war Movement. Each page also contains a number of tabs that can be clicked on for
more detailed information, including skeletal timelines of key events in the lives of various historical actors.
In a recent study examining the impact of source texts on students’ history essays, Miller et al. (2016) found that texts that are not
overtly evaluative are better able to elicit arguing genres because students are “unable to simply re-tell the source text author’s point
of view” (p. 21). As the present study does not include an analysis of the Appraisal resources employed in the source materials, it is
not possible to determine the extent to which the materials used here contain explicit evaluations or extended arguments and how
these may have shaped writers’ judgments of historical actors. A cursory look at the core narrative of the textbook, however, suggests
that it is in keeping with the common conservative practice of textbook writers to avoid explicit judgments of people, especially
negative or highly contentious, ethics-oriented evaluations (see Oteíza, 2003, and Myskow, 2017, 2018a, 2018b for an examination
of Attitude types in history textbooks). For example, one section of the textbook describes in considerable detail President Nixon’s
role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, yet it does not include any explicit adjectival evaluations of the president. Instead,
evaluations of him are mainly performed implicitly by chronicling his unethical or illegal activities in, for example, “Nixon suggested
the payments of hush money… [and] recommended that staffers perjure themselves if subpoenaed in court” (Ushistory.org, 2018).
Future research exploring how writers incorporate views from source texts into biographical essays would be worthwhile (see Miller
et al., 2014, 2016 for research examining students ‘uptake’ from source texts in arguing genres).
3.4. Data analysis
All essays were coded using Martin and White’s (2005) Attitude resources of the Appraisal framework: Affect (positive/negative
Happiness; Security; Satisfaction; and Inclination), Judgment (positive/negative Normality; Capacity; Tenacity; Veracity; Propriety),
and Appreciation (positive/negative Reaction; Composition; Valuation) (see Table 1 for sample realizations of these resources).
In the preliminary analysis, the two researchers independently coded 25% of the data (16 essays totaling approximately 4560
words). The inter-coder reliability was calculated by dividing the number of coded items agreed upon by the coders by the total
number of instances. A somewhat low inter-coder reliability (76.23%) was obtained partly because of the complex framework
employed for scrutiny of the essay data as well as irregular spellings observed in student writing (e.g., She gladlly accepted it), which
we had not agreed on how to treat prior to the analysis. We determined that such irregularities would be coded so long as the writer’s
intention is clear. Disagreements were discussed between the two researchers until all were resolved. The remaining data was then
coded by one of the researchers. Following Coffin (2006), frequencies of Appraisal categories were calculated per 500 words. This
formula was selected so that results could be compared with related research using the same formula to examine Appraisal in history
discourse including L1 writers’ essays (Coffin, 2006) and textbooks (Myskow, 2017, 2018a, 2018b).
Essays were scored by an external rater—a native speaker of English and a qualified teacher of history subject-matter in the
secondary school context.3
Our reason for not grading the essays ourselves is that as linguists specializing in the language of history
we did not want our own suppositions about the linguistic features of this genre to impact essays’ scores. We decided that an external
rater with a background in history instruction would be better able to assess the extent to which essays achieve the goals of the genre,
and would be less influenced by normative assessments of how language ‘ought to’ be employed in its various stages. The rater was
asked to assign each essay a score (1–4) using a rubric developed by the researchers (see Appendix B for the scoring instructions and
rubric). The rubric was designed to assess the extent to which essays achieved the central rhetorical goal of the biography genre,
namely, to record the key events of a person’s life and draw out their significance with an evaluation that follows logically from the
evidence provided (see Coffin, 2006, p. 54). Therefore, the rubric included a descriptor to assess whether “evaluations of the his-
torical figure are appropriate and follow logically from the information written about him/her”. Prior to assessing the essays, the
rater was asked to read a set of scoring guidelines that explained the assignment and the conditions under which the essays were
written. The researchers also provided the rater with four anchor papers that were considered representative of each of the four
scoring categories along with brief explanations of the scoring decisions. Based on the rater’s scores, the corpus of 62 essays was
divided into the following four groups: HGE 4 (high-graded essays; score 4), HGE 3 (high-graded essays; score 3), LGE 2 (low-graded
essays; score 2), and LGE 1 (low-graded essays; score 1). The number of essays in each group and their word counts are shown in
Table 2.
As part of the scoring process, the rater was also asked to write 1–2 comments explaining scoring decisions. The purpose of
collecting this data was to provide additional insight into the second research question concerning the interaction between explicit
(inscribed) evaluation and implicit (invoked) realizations. By having the rater comment on scoring decisions—scores that are pri-
marily assessments of the extent to which essays achieve their rhetorical goal of providing an evidence-informed evaluation of a
person’s life—we hoped to learn more about the particular discourse features at work in essays that are identified as successfully
3
The rater obtained an International Baccalaureate Diploma in Geography and Individuals and Societies (a multidisciplinary diploma that includes
historical skills). At the time of the study, the rater was teaching CLIL-based geography and history courses at an international secondary-school in
Japan.
60

achieving this goal.
A qualitative analysis was carried out on the essays that received high scores. Analysis followed a three-step procedure detailed in
Friedman (2012, p. 191) for analyzing qualitative data in second language research. First, in the “initial coding (or open-coding
stage)”, a small data set of two essays was selected. These essays were chosen because they received high scores and they were
commented on by the rater as effectively incorporating evidence in support of claims. Labels were assigned to the particular instances
of evidence that were used in support of writers’ claims. For example, the label ‘Activity’ was assigned to a statement about Rosa
Parks refusing the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to whites—an activity that was identified as providing effective support for the
writer’s explicit evaluation of her brave action in the Evaluation of Person Stage.
In the second stage of data analysis, referred to as “axial coding” (Friedman, 2012, p. 191), comparisons across larger and smaller
subcategories were made with the aim of identifying patterns and expanding and submerging subcategories. Finally, in the “selective
coding (or focused coding)” (Friedman, 2012, p. 191) frequent codes were applied across the entire data set of HGEs. This proved to
be a recursive process where refinements were made to the categories as new data was coded. Throughout this process, the rater’s
comments were examined to identify particular pieces of evidence that the rater regarded as providing effective support for the
writer’s claims. Identifying this evidence proved to be fairly straightforward, and thus we did not feel it necessary to conduct follow-
up interviews with the rater. Once the categories were determined, sequences in their occurrence in HGEs were also examined. The
result of this process was a proposed pedagogical model referred to here as FACTS (Feelings, Activities, Circumstances, Transfor-
mations, Scale). These categories of evidence, along with key sequences CAT and ACT are detailed in the Findings and Discussion
section.
To address the third research question regarding the grammatical patterning of evaluative resources, further analysis was carried
out of adjectival realizations of Attitude subcategories. Adjectives were selected because of their strong association with attitudinal
meanings. As Martin and White (2005) put it, “the canonical grammatical realisation for attitude is adjectival” (p. 58). Their pat-
terning was examined to determine if they were realized as predicates (e.g., he is disingenuous), attributes (e.g., he is a disingenuous
politician) or the various complementation patterns discussed in Su and Hunston’s (in press) corpus of biographical material drawn
from the BNC (British National Corpus). These include ADJ at, ADJ about, ADJ by, ADJ for, ADJ in, ADJ of, ADJ to n, ADJ towards, ADJ
with, ADJ to-inf., and ADJ that. Total occurrences for each pattern were calculated and compared with findings from Su and Hunston’s
(in press) corpus. While we expect that the findings from the present study will be of value to teachers and researchers of the
biographical essay genre across different educational contexts, the research methods used here are descriptive, and thus we do not
aim to draw any firm conclusions of how L2 writers of other language and educational backgrounds employ the linguistic features
discussed here.
4. Findings and discussion
4.1. Attitude preferences in high and low graded essays
Table 3 shows the frequencies of Attitude and their distribution per 500 words across high and low-graded essays (HGEs & LGEs).
As apparent in Table 3, of the three Attitude categories, Judgment was found to have the highest overall frequency (6.86) followed
closely by Appreciation (6.70) and more distantly by Affect (3.80). The high frequency of Judgment is not surprising, considering the
Table 2
Graded Essay Groups and Word Counts.
Group n of Essays n of Words
HGE 4 10 3090
HGE 3 23 6888
HGE Totals 33 9978
LGE 2 22 6412
LGE 1 7 2050
LGE Totals 29 8462
Totals 62 18440
Table 3
Frequencies of Attitude per 500 Words and Their Distribution Across High- and Low-Graded Essays.
Attitude Categories HGE (Scores 4 & 3) LGE (Scores 2 & 1) Corpus Totals
4 3 HGE Totalsa
2 1 LGE Totals
Affect 2.27 3.56 3.16 4.76 3.90 4.55 3.80
Judgment 5.99 7.84 7.27 6.1603 7.07 6.38 6.86
Appreciation 6.63 7.19 7.02 6.47 5.85 6.44 6.70
Totals 14.89 18.58 17.44 17.39 16.83 17.37 17.35
a
Total frequencies were calculated based on the total words of the combined corpuses of rated essays.
61

rhetorical aim of the biography genre is to evaluate people (see Appendix A for an example of the Biographical Recount from the data
set of the present study). Instances of Appreciation were often used to evaluate the impact of their actions (e.g., he had a good effect on
Chinese diplomatic relations; her… influential activities). The low frequency of Affect is consistent with Coffin’s (2006) research that
found biographies rely less on Affect than other history genres (p.183).
Comparing Attitude resources used in HGEs and LGEs, the two groups were fairly stable in terms of Judgment (HGEs = 7.27;
LGEs = 6.38) and Appreciation (HGEs = 7.02; LGEs = 6.44). The most notable difference between the two groups is a stronger
reliance on Affect in the LGEs (4.79) than HGEs (3.15). A closer analysis of the Attitude subcategories shown in Table 4 indicates that
with the exception of negative Security and to a lesser extent, positive Happiness, findings across the two groups were fairly con-
sistent. One reason for the higher occurrence of negative Security in the LGEs is that these essays made greater use of several Japanese
cognates of English words (shock and tension). Such words may be readily available to Japanese writers of English at lower proficiency
levels and thus the discrepancy between the two groups in their use of Affect could be explained, at least in part, by a greater reliance
on borrowed English words in the lower graded essays.
Another point of difference between the two groups (Table 4) is in their selections of the Appreciation resources Valuation,
especially negative loadings, which were considerably higher in HGEs (1.25) than LGEs (0.53). This category contains many of the
attitudinal resources associated with historical significance (a major/minor event widespread/limited impact) that in Coffin’s (2000)
words are “institutionally ‘tuned’ to the field of history” (p. 277). This resource, concerned with “how worthwhile” something is
(Martin & White, 2005, p. 56), is illustrated in HGE’s evaluations of Iranian revolutionary Ayatollah Khomeini’s anti-western policy
having a harmful effect and Nixon’s Vietnamization policy as unsuccessful. Low-graded essays relied more on the Affect resources of
negative Security/Happiness to report the impact of historical developments. Describing the effects of racial segregation in the US,
one LGE states that many African Americans didn’t live happily (-Happiness), while another, making the point that the Vietnam War
was the first war broadcasted on television, observes that many people were greatly shocked (-Security) to watch horrible scenes.
Aside from these differences between HGEs and LGEs in their use of Affect subtypes (Security and Happiness) and Appreciation
(Valuation), few other major differences between these groups were found. As shown in Table 4, positive/negative value-loadings of
Attitude had no effect on essay scores. Frequencies for both positive inscriptions of Attitude (HGEs = 11.22; LGEs = 10.99) and
negative ones (HGEs = 6.21; LGEs = 6.38) were remarkably similar—a finding that is at odds with studies of arguing genres that
suggest negative evaluations are associated with higher scores (e.g., Lv, 2015).
Another key finding displayed in Table 4 is that Judgment subcategories were mostly consistent across the two groups. Especially
notable is the uniformity between LGEs and HGEs in their deployment of the ethics-oriented Social Sanction categories, Veracity and
Propriety. While variation between the two groups in the use of Propriety was nominal (HGEs 0.65; LGEs 0.77), the resources of
Veracity were completely absent from both groups of essays—a finding that supports other studies that found a low occurrence of this
resource in different types of historical discourse including L1 student essays (Coffin, 2000, p. 328) and history textbooks (Myskow,
2018a).
The lack of variation between LGEs and HGEs in ethics-oriented Judgment contrasts with the mixed results of other studies that
found HGEs to have higher (McCabe & Whittaker, 2017, p. 116) or lower (Lee, 2006, p. 264) occurrences of Social Sanction resources
than LGEs. It is worth noting, however, that studies up to now have been mainly focused on judgments in the context of arguing
genres. In the arguing genre family, a high-graded essay that performs an ethics-oriented Judgment of historical actors would likely
Table 4
Frequencies of Positive/Negative Attitude Subcategories per 500 Words and Their Distribution Across High- and Low-Graded Essays.
Attitude Subcategories HGEs
(Scores 4 & 3 Combined)
LGEs
(Scores 2 & 1 Combined)
Positive Negative Total Positive Negative Total
Inclination 1.25 0.05 1.30 1.30 0.06 1.36
Security 0.15 0.65 0.80 0.18 1.54 1.71
Happiness 0.35 0.65 1.00 0.77 0.59 1.36
Satisfaction 0.00 0.05 0.05 0.00 0.12 0.12
Affect
Totals
1.75 1.40 3.16 2.25 2.30 4.55
Fortune 0.00 0.30 0.30 0.00 0.00 0.00
Recognition 2.81 0.55 3.36 2.30 1.00 3.31
Capacity 1.20 0.40 1.60 0.89 0.24 1.12
Tenacity 1.20 0.15 1.35 1.00 0.18 1.18
Veracity 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Propriety 0.25 0.40 0.65 0.24 0.53 0.77
Judgment
Totals
5.46 1.80 7.27 4.43 1.95 6.38
Reaction 0.40 0.70 1.10 1.00 0.83 1.83
Composition 0.40 1.05 1.45 0.65 0.77 1.42
Valuation 3.21 1.25 4.46 2.66 0.53 3.19
Appreciation
Totals
4.01 3.01 7.02 4.31 2.13 6.44
Corpus Totals 11.22 6.21 17.44 10.99 6.38 17.37
62

require considerable facility with a range of argumentative language features to successfully advance potentially contentious ethical
evaluations. If used effectively, these resources could cause essays to be evaluated more favorably.
As mentioned previously, these arguing resources—accounted for in Appraisal as “Engagement”—were not investigated in the
present study’s analysis because they were not considered salient features of this genre (see Martin & White, 2005, pp. 92–153). As
Coffin (2006) observes, unlike arguing genres that are characterized by a “context of ‘heteroglossia’ (multivoicedness) in which
alternative interpretations and points of view operate” (p. 85), recording genres make greater use of bare, ‘monoglossic’ assertions (p.
85), construing a high degree of reader-writer alignment. Thus, they are often used to present uncontentious, “mainstream versions of
the past” (Coffin, 2006, p. 56). However, we did note some use of heteroglossic resources, especially in the more analytical Evaluation
of Person Stage. For example,
[3] True, [Richard Nixon] had a bad image in Watergate Scandal. However, he had positive influences on the world society as well
as the American society.
In this instance [3] the writer makes use of the Concur-Counter pairing to integrate two competing views of Nixon (see Martin &
White, 2005, p. 124). By acknowledging the bad image of Nixon using the Concur instantiation True, the writer can then dismiss or
‘counter’ it with a description of his positive accomplishments. Though these heteroglossic resources were not modelled in the sample
essay provided to students, as [3] shows, there are at least some examples of students making, in our view, rather effective use of
them.
In keeping with Coffin’s (2006) observations of this genre, the Engagement resource Attribution appears to be used to report the
views of “anonymous sayers” (p. 55) (e.g., he is praised as a great President/known as a terrible president) rather than integrate the
perspectives of different historians into the text. Of course, this is entirely expected as there was no requirement that students consult
materials beyond the course text. The particular task specifications including time constraints and a limited word length (250–300
words) of the writing task in the present study also made it impractical for learners to incorporate multiple voices into their essays.
This suggests that a lack of heteroglossic Engagement resources in the biographical genre could be a function of the particular task
specifications outlined here rather than any hardened genre conventions. Further research exploring interactions between Engage-
ment and Attitude in biographical essays produced in other educational contexts without such limited word restrictions and time
constraints would be welcome.
4.2. Interaction between implicit and explicit Attitude realizations
The qualitative analysis of the essays and the rater’s comments on them enabled us to identify patterns in the ways HGEs present
evidence in support of conclusions. Based on these patterns, the following five analytical categories are proposed to account for how
evaluations of historical actors are shown to ‘follow from’ a record of their lives’ events: (1) reports of historical actors’ Feelings,
including their emotions (Affect), evaluations of others (Judgment) and things (Appreciation); (2) the Activities they performed in
their lives (e.g., behavioral, verbal mental); (3) the Circumstances surrounding historical actors including events that happened to
them and which they have little control over4
; (4) Transformations that occur as a result of their actions and the impact these have
on the world around them, and finally (5) the Scale of these factors (1–4) in their intensity and quantity. These categories (Feelings,
Activities, Circumstances, Transformations, and Scale) are summarized here by the acronym FACTS. They are discussed in turn in the
following sections (see Appendix A for a Biographical Recount from the data set of the present study showing the FACTS analytical
categories).
4.2.1. Feelings as evidence
One way that writers were found to provide evidence for their claims is by reporting the thoughts and feelings of historical actors.
At stake in this category of evidence is Martin and White’s (2005) Attitude network of Appraisal (Appreciation of things; Judgments
of people; and expressions of emotions). As it is the evidence used in support of evaluations that is of focus here, we are not concerned
with the writers’ own evaluations, often found in the Evaluation-of-Person Stage, but rather with those sourced to historical actors
and other discourse participants such as historians. For example, a writer’s explicit positive judgment of the American civil rights
activist Rosa Parks for her bravery is supported in the Record-of-Events Stage by implicit realizations of Attitude sourced to Rosa Parks
including positive Security in she kept calm and showed no resistance to the police.
Support may also be found in reports of the emotions of others who were affected by the historical actor’s decisions. An essay
about US president Harry Truman evaluates his use of the atomic bomb during World War II as his most significant decision—a claim
that finds support in the writer’s reports of how Truman’s decision impacted people: his constant claim to justify the atomic bombing also
made Japanese people angry (negative Satisfaction).
4.2.2. Activities as evidence
Reports of the activities historical actors are engaged with in their lives also work to provide evidence for explicit authorial
judgments made later in the Evaluation-of-Person Stage. One essay describing the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong concludes
with a judgment of him as ‘a strong leader’—an evaluation that finds support in the preceding Record-of-Events Stage with implicit
positive appraisals of various activities he undertook (e.g., Mao and other communist leaders tried to reshape Chinese society). In this
4
The use of circumstances here is distinct from Halliday’s use of the term to describe clausal elements (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
63

example, Mao occupies the initial theme position of the clause—a construction that positions him as the ‘doer’ of the action. The
writer also employs marked themes that foreground prepositional phrases of time rather than human participants (e.g., In 1958, Mao
launched the “Great Leap Forward aiming to improve agricultural and industrial production). In both examples what is important is
Mao’s role as the principle actor carrying out these activities—undertakings that provide implicit support for the claim in the
Evaluation-of-Person Stage that he is a strong leader.
In addition to material processes (e.g., reshape, launch), Activities include verbal and mental processes. In support of one writer’s
position that British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was good at thinking out solutions is the statement that Churchill
criticized [Chamberlain’s appeasement policy] and complained of the threat of Nazis. Also providing support for writers’ evaluations
are reports of historical actors’ mental activities. One writer’s conclusion (a rather contentious one) that US President Richard Nixon
had a positive influence on the world is supported by a statement using the mental process verb decide in Nixon decided to withdraw the
U.S. forces from Vietnam. Activities can also be realized as nominalizations rather than verbs, as the nominal construction (the attempt
to) in a statement about Mao shows: In the attempt to re-assert his authority, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution.
4.2.3. Circumstances as evidence
Another way evidence is built up in the Record-of-Events Stage is by describing the circumstances surrounding the historical
actors’ actions. Consider the following excerpt that is used to support a writer’s view of US President Franklin Roosevelt in the
Evaluation-of-Person Stage that he worked for the good of the nation:
[4] In 1933, Roosevelt became (Circumstance) president. At this time, the U.S. faced (Circumstance) the greatest crisis in
American history since the Civil War: increasing unemployment, factory closings, and bank failures (Circumstance). He proposed
(Activity) sweeping economic reform, calling (Activity) it the “New Deal”. He rebuilt (Activity) the banks to bring economic
stabilization and provided relief for the unemployed by establishing the Works Projects Administration (WPA).
The aggressive activities Roosevelt undertook here (proposing sweeping economic reform and rebuilding the banks) are understood within
the context or ‘circumstances’ they were carried out (i.e., increasing unemployment, factory closings, and bank failures). Roosevelt is
positioned as a protagonist in an unfolding narrative in which he overcomes adversarial Circumstances by imposing his will on the
world. Thus, these circumstantial ‘facts’ work collaboratively with activities performed by the historical actor, positioning the reader
to take up the writer’s view in the Evaluation-of-Person Stage that Roosevelt worked for the good of the nation. Key language features
that were found to construe historical circumstances are passive voice constructions (Vietnam was divided into the north and the South)
and relational verbs (Roosevelt became president).
4.2.4. Transformations as evidence
Perhaps the most important type of evidence is the effects or transformations that occur as a result of historical participants’
activities. In the previous example [4], the transformative effects of Roosevelt’s rebuilding the banks and establishing the Works
Project Administration were to bring economic stabilization and provide relief for the unemployed. Here the verb bring signals an explicit
causal connection between his actions and their effects. Other instances of explicit causation include sentence connectors (as a result)
and phrase linkers (because of). In a statement about Vietcong leader Ho Chi Minh the writer uses the phrase linker because of in
stating that [the Vietnam War] receded because of [Ho’s] actions—a claim that is used in support of the writer’s conclusion that he
played an important role in Vietnamese history (see Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005; Fitzgerald, 2014 for SFL-based discussions of
historical causation).
Relations between actions and effects may also be implicit. In an essay about British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s decisions
during the Falkland War, the writer states: Taking a swift action, Thatcher sent British troops to the islands to retake them. Argentina soon
surrendered. Although the causal relation between the two clauses is not made explicit by a signaling device (e.g., consequently, as a
result), it is implied that Argentina’s quick surrender is a result of Thatcher’s swift action (see Fitzgerald, 2014 for a discussion of these
types of causal relations).
4.2.5. Scale as evidence
We also found that the scaling of quantity and extent throughout the Record of Events Stage, especially increases in it, can
perform a supporting role for claims in the Evaluation of Person Stage. The type of language features at work here are those outlined
in Martin and White’s (2005) Graduation network of Appraisal, which are concerned with the “gradability” or “up-scaling and down-
scaling” of meanings (p. 135). A writer’s evaluation of US President Lyndon Johnson as having a major effect on American society is
evidenced in part by the intensification of number in the observation that he sent many American troops [to Vietnam]. (see Hood, 2006
for an in-depth discussion of Graduation and invoked Attitude).
4.2.6. Patterns of FACTS (CAT & ACT)
A great deal of variation was found in the patterning of the different features of evidence (FACTS) in student essays. Feelings and
Scale were especially variable, occurring throughout the various stages of the essays. However, we were able to identify several
patterns in the corpus that we considered effective techniques for presenting evidence. The first follows a Circumstances-Activities-
Transformations pattern, (abbreviated as CAT) and illustrated in the aforementioned example [3] describing Roosevelt’s New Deal. In
the first part of this excerpt are the Circumstances (increasing unemployment, factory closings, and bank failures), followed by an Activity
(Roosevelt proposing sweeping economic reform) and finally, the Transformation that occurred as a result of his activity: economic
stabilization and relief for the unemployed. As this example shows, the value of the Activity carried out by the historical participant
64

hinges on the positive/negative loading of the Transformations and the Circumstances that were in place at the time of the activity. In
this case, the negative Circumstances (increasing unemployment etc.) and the positive Transformations (economic stabilization) clearly
position the reader to align with the writer’s positive view of Roosevelt’s actions.
Another related pattern is Activities-Circumstances-Transformations (ACT), which is simply a reversal of the first two stages of the
CAT pattern. Example [5], an excerpt from an essay about Ayatollah Khomeini, illustrates this pattern:
[5] Khomeini strongly opposed to the dictatorship (Activity) of the Shah Pahlavi and his Westernization policy. Especially, he
opposed “White Revolution” (Activity) which was launched (Circumstance) for the purpose of achieving industrialization of Iran
by exporting oil to western countries or Japan. Because of (Transformation) his political opinion, he was exiled from Iran in
1964.
Unlike CAT, the ACT pattern in this excerpt foregrounds the Activities of the historical participant (Khomeini’s opposition to
Westernization policies) with the Circumstances that explain the rationale for the Westernization policies playing a supporting role.
While a positive/negative evaluation of Khomeini is perhaps not as easy to discern as that in the Roosevelt essay, the inclusion of
Circumstances (the Shah’s goal of industrializing Iran by exporting oil) hints at a reason for Khomeini’s opposition to him (see
Appendix A for a Biographical Recount from the data set of the present study showing the CAT and ACT analytical categories).
Essays that omitted Circumstances altogether were considerably less successful. The following excerpt from a low-graded-essay
discussing Richard Nixon’s visit to China includes no mention of the Circumstances surrounding the visit:
[6] The first “Shock” is [Nixon’s] announcement (Activity) of visiting China. He sent (Activity) Kissinger secretly and promised
(Activity) his visiting to Zhou Enlat. Then he announced (Activity) to the world that he would visit China in order to make their
relationship better. He would really visit (Activity) China in the next year and meet (Activity) Zhou Enlat and Mao Zedong. As a
result (Transformation) he succeeded in recovering relationship with China.
This excerpt inventories the various announcements and promises made by Nixon and then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger
in the lead up to Nixon’s visit. While the writer concludes by describing a major impact of his Activities (recovering relations with
China), the lack of information about the Circumstances in which this transformation occurred (i.e., the Cold War) makes it hard for
readers to appreciate the significance of improved relations between the two countries. The absence of historical context in this essay
is commented on by the rater, observing that how Nixon changed policies in America is not clear as there is no reference to what the
standard was.
To sum up, the evidence mnemonic outlined above (FACTS) and displayed in Table 5 is a useful schematic for capturing how
writers position readers in the ‘fact-based’ Record-of-Events Stage of biographical essays to align with their judgments of historical
actors in the Evaluation-of-Person Stage. The CAT and ACT patterns were found to be effective techniques for presenting evidence. As
the next section shows, evidence need not be confined to the Record-of-Events Stage but can be integrated into evaluative statements
at the clausal level in the Evaluation-of-Person Stage.
Table 5
Categories of Evidence (FACTS) and Sample Realizations.
Categories of Evidence (FACTS) Language Resources Examples from corpus
Feelings expressed by the historical actor and other discourse
participants that are reported (but not performed) by the
authorial voice).
The Attitude network of Appraisal
(Affect, Judgment and Appreciation)
• He absolutely hated Western customs and
ways of thinking.
• This announcement surprised everyone.
• Many Chinese people respect him as the founder
of their country.
Activities that the historical actor undertakes. Material, verbal, mental, behavioral
processes and their nominalized forms
• [Churchill] complained of the threat of Nazis.
• Nixon decided to withdraw the U.S. forces from
Vietnam.
• In 1966, in the attempt to re-assert his
authority, Mao launched the Cultural
Revolution.
Circumstances surrounding the historical actor including events
that happened to him/her.
Relational verbal processes and passive
voice constructions
• At that time there was much discrimination
against black people.
• In 1963, Johnson became President after the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy
• In 1954, Vietnam was divided into the north and
the South
Transformations that occur as a result of the historical actor’s
activities.
Logical relations of cause-effect;
(explicit and implicit realizations)
• In 1969 the war came to recede because of his
actions
• This led to deaths of 15 million
• Thatcher sent British troops to the islands to
retake them. Argentina soon surrendered
Scales of feelings/ activities/ circumstances/ transformations in
terms of intensity and quantity.
The Graduation network of Appraisal;
circumstantial adjuncts
• [Johnson] sent many American troops
• At this time, the U.S. faced the greatest crisis in
American history since the Civil War.
65

4.3. Realizations of Attitude in language patterns
Table 6 displays the total occurrences of three adjectival patterns (attribution, predication, and complementation) and their
realizations across Attitude subtypes. As these findings show, essays relied overwhelmingly on attributive adjectival patterns, (e.g.,
her brave actions in the bus…), and, to a lesser extent on predicative ones (e.g., his leadership was great). Such patterns lend a feeling
of immutability to the evaluation, suggesting it is conclusive, that it is enshrined in the person’s essence.
Only 48 instances of adjectival complementation patterns (e.g., he was good at handling diplomacy problems) were identified in the
corpus. As previously discussed, these constructions function to provide greater specificity for evaluations. Thus, they are important
resources for connecting evaluations with their supporting evidence, bringing together the historical actor’s specific Activities,
Circumstances, or Transformations with their evaluations. Such features can play an especially critical role in the concluding
Evaluation-of-Person Stage to summarize the reasons for the evaluation taken up in the Record-of-Events Stage. Consider the fol-
lowing Judgment of Ayatollah Khomeini:
[7] However, he was regarded as dangerous by Pahlavi and deported to Turkey.
This pattern (ADJ-by) provides insight into the context of the evaluation by sourcing the evaluation of Khomeini’s dangerousness to
Shah Pahlavi. Hence, the pattern enables the writer to go beyond a simple evaluation of him to express greater evaluative precision,
illuminating the context or Circumstances of his perceived dangerousness. Adjectival complementation patterns can also help to clarify
the scope of a historical figure’s impact. In an essay about US Law Enforcement Officer J. Edgar Hoover that highlights his role in
creating the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it concludes that the FBI, is indispensable for the safety of lives in the USA today.
Due to the low occurrence of these patterns, it was not possible to make meaningful comparisons across high- and low-graded
essays. However, by comparing the preferences of this group of writers as a whole with those of other more expert writers reported in
other studies, some complementation patterns can be identified as possible targets of instruction for teachers. Table 7 compares the
corpus totals for Adjectival Complementation Patterns of Affect, Judgment and Appreciation from the present study with findings
from Su and Hunston’s (in press) recent study of evaluative patterns in a corpus of biographical material derived from the BNC.
Comparative frequencies are indicated by a descending order with the most frequent patterns displayed at the top of Table 7 and the
least frequent at the bottom. Also included in Table 7 are the number of occurrences for each complementation pattern from the
Table 6
Total Occurrences of Adjectival Patterns and Their Realizations Across Attitude Types.
Adjectival Types Attitude Types Totals
Affect Judgment Appreciation
Attribution 4 133 134 271
Predication 9 17 39 65
Complementation 14 18 16 48
Totals 27 168 189 384
Table 7
Adjective Complementation Patterns From Su and Hunston’s Study of Biographical Material and Their Occurrences in L2 Biographical Essays.
Studies of Attitude Complementation Patterns
Su & Hunstona
Present Studyb
Attitudec
Attitude
Adjective Patterns Aff. Judg. App. Totals Aff. Judg. App. Totals
ADJ to n 9 43 83 135 0 1 0 1
ADJ in 15 64 30 109 0 1 2 3
ADJ to-inf. 62 23 12 97 3 1 6 10
ADJ for 20 20 57 97 5 1 1 7
ADJ with 37 24 13 74 0 0 0 0
ADJ of 30 27 15 72 4 0 0 4
ADJ about 39 32 0 71 2 0 0 2
ADJ by 52 0 3 55 2 1 1 4
ADJ that 46 3 0 49 1 1 1 3
ADJ at 34 11 0 45 1 1 0 2
ADJ towards 1 14 0 15 0 0 0 0
Totals 345 261 213 819 18 7 11 36
Note.
a
Su and Hunston’s (in press) findings from BNC corpus of biographical material.
b
Current findings from L2 writers.
c
Attitude subcategories abbreviated as follows: Affect (Aff.); Judgment (Judg.); Appreciation (App).
66

present corpus. The limited number of Adjectival complementation instances in the present study preclude us from drawing con-
clusions about the comparative preferences of L1 and L2 writers, but the findings here point to some areas for exploration.
As apparent in Table 7, the only pattern that occurred with some regularity in our corpus is the ADJ to-inf formulation (n = 10),
instanced in [Robert F. Kennedy (RFK)] was eager to fight against poverty. However, unlike Su and Hunston’s (in press) corpus that
found this pattern to be strongly associated with Affect, in our corpus the majority of realizations were of Appreciation (e.g., [Re-
agan’s Star Wars plan] was too big to execute).
Other complementation patterns of Affect found in Su and Hunston (in press) that had a low occurrence in our corpus include ADJ
by:
[8] American people were shocked by the scandal.
And ADJ that, illustrated in the following somewhat more complex example using it v-link ADJ that (see Su and Hunston, in press):
[9] It is especially admirable that RFK [who] stood by the weak people died.
This pattern [9] may be especially relevant to the concluding section of the essays (i.e., Evaluation of the Person Stage) where the
historical record is summarized and evaluations are performed. As Hunston and Su (2017) show, the ADJ that construction can be an
effective means of bundling together an evaluation with its reasons or causes. As the previous example [9] illustrates, the evaluation
of RFK as admirable is fused together with a summary of the reasons for this claim by a that-clause, stating he stood by the weak people
[and] died.
As for Judgment, the most frequent pattern found in Su and Hunston (in press) is ADJ in as shown in the invented example: ‘she
was successful in her professional life’. However, no instances of this pattern were found in our corpus, and we identified only one
token of the second most common pattern of Judgment complementation found in Su and Hunston’s corpus (ADJ to n), shown in the
following sentence about American civil rights activist Malcolm X: he mainly criticized American society where black people are [con-
sidered] inferior to white people. The (ADJ to n) also had the highest occurrence for Appreciation, yet it was used only once to realize
this Attitude type in our corpus. While these results do not offer any firm conclusions about the differences between high- and low-
rated essays in their selections of particular adjectival patterns, the low occurrence of these features in our corpus of L2 essays
suggests a fruitful target for instruction. Genre analysis activities could be used by teachers to encourage learners to notice the ways
adjectives are patterned by expert users. Writers may also benefit from controlled practice tasks, such as transformations, sub-
stitutions and other sentence-level drills. However, as the use of complementation patterns by writers in the present study was
limited, further research is necessary to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the issues writers face producing these patterns.
A large-scale study of attitudinal inscriptions in the Evaluation-of-Person-Stage of biographical essays would be especially welcome.
5. Conclusion and implications
This study explored the evaluative features of L2 biographical essays and the ways evidence is used in support of them. While the
distribution of Attitudinal resources in the essays (e.g., a high frequency of Judgment and a low occurrence of Affect) was consistent
with the findings of other studies of this genre, little difference was found between high- and low-graded essays in their selections of
particular subtypes of Attitude. Moreover, no meaningful variation was found between the two groups in their preferences for
positive/negative loadings. The findings suggest writing teachers should exercise caution when prescribing the use of particular
subtypes of Attitude in student essays. Specifically, they should avoid encouraging learners to take up a more ‘critical’ perspective by
using more negatively-charged inscriptions or the ‘stronger’ ethics-oriented resources of Social Sanction. The findings here suggest
instead that writers could benefit from an instructional focus on modeling the ways evidence is assembled in support of opinions and
how it is integrated with attitudinal inscriptions in particular grammar patterns.
As the biographical essay genre follows an inductive informational structure where the writer’s viewpoint emerges only after a
dispassionate Record of Events stage, the ways skilled writers use evidence in support of their evaluations may not be obvious to
learners, especially to those conditioned to write in more deductive rhetorical structures such as the five-paragraph-theme. The
mnemonic FACTS (Feelings, Activities, Circumstances, Transformations, Scale) was proposed to familiarize learners with the ways
evidence is mobilized in support of conclusions. The CAT (Circumstances- Activities- Transformations) and ACT (Activities-
Circumstances- Transformations) were found to be especially effective rhetorical patterns for positioning readers to align with
writers’ conclusions.
The FACTS mnemonic can be used as part of genre analysis activities to draw learners’ attention to options for patterning
information in the Record of Events Stage of historical essays. Writers can be directed to identify CAT/ACT patterns in essay excerpts
and compare them with other ways of presenting evidence. This pedagogical model may also have implications for reading in-
struction. Coffin (2006) observes that the historical recount “often forms a backbone” of contemporary [history] textbooks with
different stages of the genre “spread across chapters or sections within a chapter” (pp. 62–63). Familiarizing students with the ways
these patterns are used in seemingly neutral or factual accounts of the past may contribute to a deeper understanding of the rhetorical
logic of these texts. Further research is needed to assess the applicability of FACTS to other inductive genres.
The findings also showed that writers relied overwhelmingly on attributive and predicative adjectival patterns, suggesting that
they may benefit from focused instruction in common adjectival complementation patterns. As discussed previously, such patterns
provide greater specificity for attitudinal inscriptions. This could help writers more effectively integrate concluding evaluations with
evidence at the clausal level and avoid overly simplistic characterizations that rely on predicative (he was dishonest) and attributive
(the dishonest politician) formulations. Such constructions include ADJ in for construing Judgment (he was dishonest in his business
dealings), ADJ to-inf for reporting Affect (he was reluctant to implicate others) and ADJ to n, which is commonly used with
67

Appreciation of things (his policies were beneficial to investors).
This study has shown that the principle challenges L2 writers face producing the evaluative language of biographical essays are
largely unrelated to their selections of particular attitudinal subcategories. What is more challenging for writers is marshaling facts in
support of conclusions and creating greater evaluative specificity by integrating evaluations with evidence in particular grammatical
constructions. Further research is needed examining particular classroom activities for developing learners’ facility with the language
of different genres.
Acknowledgements
This paper is part of a project that received funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, KAKENHI (Grant #
18K00881).
The authors wish to thank Susan Hunston for feedback on work leading to this project and Hang Su for valuable suggestions on an
earlier draft of the paper. We are also grateful for the very helpful feedback from the two anonymous reviewers.
Appendix A
Sample Biographical Essay in Three Stages Coded for Appraisal and FACTS*
Stages Biography of Ayatollah Khomeini
Orientation:
Record of
Events:
Evaluation
of Person
Ayatollah Khomeini was a Shiite jurist of Iran and became a leader
of Iran in 1979 by forcing overthrowing the Iranian shah and the Prime
Minister Shakhur Bukhtiar. He was born in Khomein, Iran on May, 1900.
Khomeini strongly SCALE opposed to ACTIVITY the dictatorship of
the Emperor Pahlavi and his Westernization policy. Especially, SCALE he
opposed ACTIVITY “White Revolution” which was launched
CIRCUMSTANCE for the purpose of achieving industrialization of Iran by
exporting oil to western countries or Japan. Because of
TRANSFORMATION his political opinion, he was exiled from Iran in
1964.
In 1978, he moved ACTIVITY to France, where he was engaged
ACTIVITY as a leader of anti-shah movement. Finally, in January 1979
after the Emperor went into exile CIRCUMSTANCE in Egypt, he returned
ACTIVITY Iran. And by getting 98% of people’s approval in referendum
TRANSFORMATION, he became a leader of Iran in 1979
TRANSFORMATION.
After the Iran revolution, there were two things which greatly SCALE
influenced to CIRCUMSTANCE international society. First, he absolutely
hated (-happiness) Western custom and ways of thinking, trying to revive
ACTIVITY Islamic custom to Iran. In 1980, Khomeini supported
ACTIVITY the militant student who invaded the United States Embassy.
This accident is called “Iranian Hostage Crisis” TRANSFORMATION. As a
result, he was criticized strictly (-composition) from western-educated
countries TRANSFORMATION. So, the gap between western countries and
Iran became wider TRANSFORMATION.
Second, Iran Revolution caused the second oil shock in 1979
TRANSFORMATION. This was because Khomeini insisted that Iranian
should produce as much oil as Iranian need ACTIVITY. Because of this
TRANSFORMATION, the global oil supply decreased by 4% and the oil
price rose dramatically. As I learned in this class, the oil shock lead the
United States to be involved in unusual (-valuation) situation called
“stagflation” TRANSFORMATION.
As a absolute patriotic (+tenacity) person, he opposed the Emperor of
Pahlavi’s too rapid westernization policy and his dictatorship. And he tried
to revive Islamic custom and establish the state that esteem Sharia strictly.
In terms of this, I think he should be appreciated (+recognition). However,
Khomeini also ruled Iran autocratically (-propriety) like the Emperor of
Pahlavi. Moreover, he started excessive (-composition) anti-western policy
and had a harmful (-valuation) effect on international society by causing oil
shock or hostage accident in the United States. Considering about these
points, he should be treated as a evil (-prop) dictator. Therefore, I think
Khomeini could be evaluated from both good (-valuation) points and bad
(-valuation) points.
ACT Pattern
(Activities-
Circumstance-
Transformation)
CAT Pattern
(Circumstance-
Activities-
Transformation)
68

*FACTS (Feelings, Activities, Circumstances, Transformations and Scale) are shown in all caps. Words and phrases that signal
FACTS are in italics.
Appendix B
Rater Scoring Guide for Biographical Recount Essays
The essays you will be scoring were written by first-year college students. They were written in class under time constraints
without access to notes or references, but students had time outside of class to prepare their essays in advance.
For this assignment, learners were required to choose one famous American alive in the twentieth century and write a short essay
about him/her using the biographical recount genre. The purpose of this genre is to recount key information about a person and offer
an evaluation of his/her life. The genre is typically inductive, that is the evaluation is normally formalized in the conclusion after an
orientation to the person and a record of key events in his/her life. There were no strict specifications for word length for the essays.
Students were told that successful essays are generally between 250–300 words.
Instructions
Please use the following rubric to assign each essay a score of 1–4 and record your score in the excel sheet provided. Please also
use the space provided in the excel sheet to write 1–2 brief notes explaining your decision. To help understand the scoring criteria
used here, four anchor papers that illustrate the descriptors in each of the four bands in the rubric are provided on the following
pages. The grades and comments for the anchor papers are already entered into the excel file (highlighted in yellow).
Scoring Rubric
4 • Evaluations of the historical figure are appropriate and follow logically from the information written about him/her.
• Language mistakes do not interfere with meaning or interrupt the flow of ideas.
3 • Some points about the historical figure may be questionable or not adequately supported, but overall the evaluations
follow logically from the information written about him/her.
• Language mistakes occasionally interfere with meaning or interrupt the flow of ideas.
2 • There are numerous points made about the historical figure that are questionable or not adequately supported, OR key
evaluations do not follow logically from the information written about him/her.
• Language mistakes often interfere with meaning or interrupt the flow of ideas.
1 • There are numerous points made about the historical figure that are questionable or not adequately supported, AND key
evaluations do not follow logically from the information written about him/her.
• Language mistakes consistently interfere with meaning and interrupt the flow of ideas throughout the essay.
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Gordon Myskow (PhD) is Visiting Assistant Professor at Keio University Department of Law and Politics. He teaches content-based courses on socio-political history
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His current research focuses on CLIL and the language of history subject-matter. He is an advisor to the United Nations Test of English in Japan.
Masumi Ono (PhD) is Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Political Science at Keio University, Japan. She teaches courses on English for Academic
Purposes and Intercultural Communication. Her current research focuses on genre-based approaches, peer feedback, and instruction and assessment of integrated
writing. Her recent papers appear in Journal of Writing Research, English Language Teaching, and Writing & Pedagogy.
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