An appraisal perspective on students’ use of attitudinal resources in university EFL academic oral presentations

Abstract

Research in evaluative language classroom becomes paramount to improving students’ critical skills. Despite this fact, studies on the evaluative language of EFL students’ attitudinal resources in Indonesian universities remain tenuous. This study aims to examine the attitudinal resources in fiction book reviews by EFL students for academic oral presentations at an Indonesian private university. The analysis of attitudinal resources in this study is based on the theory of Martin and White (2005). The study applied the systemic functional linguistics approach proposed by M. A. K. Halliday (1994). Data were taken from video recordings and transcripts. The findings show that students expressed all three types of attitudinal resources; Appreciation was used most often, followed by Affect and Judgement. It shows that when reviewing books, students tend to express their appreciation, evaluate the books contents and express their feelings or emotions rather than evaluating the authors’ behaviour or character. In addition, the lexical features used by the students imply criticizing, evaluating, admiring, and praising the quality of the book. The study also found that the students used both positive and negative features. As a result, EFL students need to be empowered in universities as critical thinking skills offer the potential for effective learning that can transform them into professional users of information rather than passive recipients.

Keywords

• attitudinal resources
• appraisal system
• book review
• systemic functional linguistics
• descriptive qualitative research