Investigating the Persuasive “Punch” in Student Academic Essays

The present project has analysed high- and low-graded student writing in order to investigate how effective persuasion is achieved linguistically. The textual focus is that of the conclusion components, including those at both the paragraph level (i.e. concluding sentences) and the whole text level. The studies arising from this project have clarified the language and structure choices of effective writing to achieve compelling persuasion as the subject matter is concluded and evaluated. Aside from journal publications, the findings were shared in a seminar with English-for-Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers, to illustrate how knowledge about language can contribute to not only scholarly research, but also teachers’ understanding about the linguistic requirements of academic writing informed by SFL as appliable linguistics.

Two main findings from the analyses are:

1. In the concluding paragraphs of students’ argumentative essays, high-graded texts have a more balanced choice of modality, less overly assertive features and more prospective comments, while they still require improvements on a more consistent deployment of modality features.

2. Student writers’ main rhetorical choices for concluding a paragraph are evaluation and interpretation. In terms of rhetorical structure, evaluation refers to making a consistent comment on the writer’s attitude towards the subject matter across the paragraph, e.g. if s/he comments on the topic positively, the concluding paragraph contains a comment that is equally positive, or is made stronger or more explicit. On the other hand, interpretation refers to offering a personal commentary that may not be directly relevant to the evaluation of the subject matter. While there is no indication as to which rhetorical choice is more effective, interpretation may have to be deployed cautiously as it requires the writer to interpret findings from a perspective appropriate to the task and his/her discipline.