Expressing Attitude in Academic Writing: Appraisal in Students’ Article Reviews

Abstract

Of the various English skills that are considered challenging for English as
Foreign Language (EFL) students, writing an academic text such as article
review is one that students needs to master. Article review is a critical
evaluation of a research article written by academics. Through article
review, the attitude of the review writer can be identified. This research
investigates the realization of appraisal in the article review written by EFL
students majoring in linguistics in the English Department of Universitas
Dian Nuswantoro. The focus is limited to the appraisal attitude that includes affect, judgment, and appreciation. The attitude was analyzed by using the appraisal framework proposed by Martin and White (2005). The data were obtained purposively by selecting article reviews that met the criteria. This research was conducted by employing a descriptive qualitative method and content analysis to analyze the data. The results show that appreciation dominates the findings, followed by judgment and affect. The reviews also show that the students mostly give positive attitude to the articles they reviewed. However, negative attitude is also found especially in terms of theoretical framework and the way the article is written, such as inconsistency and the use of symbols. Overall, the students show positive appreciation to the article they reviewed, since they consider that the article is helpful gives insight on the elaboration of appraisal framework in translation studies. This research implies that article review can help students to express their thoughts and ideas critically and apply academic style in the form of written texts in English.