Abstract
A pervasive finding in learner corpus research is that advanced EFL learners tend to overuse interactional features of writer/reader visibility (WRV) in their written academic texts, including first- and second-person pronouns, I think, modal adverbs, modal auxiliaries, and questions. Very little research has been done on younger learners, however. The present study is a mixed-methods investigation of WRV features in argumentative and expository genres in the TRAWL longitudinal corpus of learner texts from Norwegian lower secondary school. Comparisons are made with more advanced levels (undergraduate university students) using the Norwegian component of ICLE, ICLE-NO. The results show that the TRAWL pupils use many WRV features in their writing, first-person reference being especially frequent (with I dominating). Compared to the advanced learners in ICLE-NO, the TRAWL learners overuse some, but not all, features. One explanation for the high frequency of WRV features in TRAWL is that the prompts – both argumentative and expository – often request a personal style. Some expository prompts and texts are more impersonal, but overall there is little distinction between the genres. The pedagogical implications are that instructors need to be more specific about genre requirements, and create more obligatory prompts that do not request a personal style.
- Journal
- Journal of Writing Research
- Published
- 2022-02-01
- DOI
- 10.17239/jowr-2022.13.03.04
- CompPile
- Search in CompPile ↗
- Open Access
- OA PDF Diamond
- Topics
- Export
- BibTeX RIS
Citation Context
Cited by in this index (0)
No articles in this index cite this work.
Cites in this index (0)
No references match articles in this index.
Related Articles
-
Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments Jan 2026Justin Cook
-
Written Communication Jan 2026Clara Palm; Ann-Christin Randahl; Liss Kerstin Sylvén
-
Pedagogy Jan 2026
-
Journal of Academic Writing Dec 2025Student Evaluative Judgements of Writing and Artificial Intelligence: The Disconnect between Structural and Conceptual Knowledge ↗Christopher Eaton; Kaitlyn Harris; Erin Vearncombe
-
Composition Forum Oct 2025