EFL RESEARCH ARTICLES THROUGH THE LENS OF PRAGMATIC POLITENESS

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EFL RESEARCH ARTICLES THROUGH THE LENS OF
PRAGMATIC POLITENESS

Zsuzsanna Walkó
Centre for English Teaching and Training, College of Nyíregyháza
walkozs@t-online.hu




Abstract: This analysis examines how four Research Articles in the field of English Language Teaching
represent the teaching – learning context they investigate. Using the concepts and categories of pragmatic
politeness, it examines how participants’ ‘face’ is considered in the description of their practice and in the
formulation of the authors’ claims, and how the authors position themselves with respect to the research and
practice contexts represented in their texts. The analysis indicates a systematic process at work in dealing with
the face needs of practitioners in these kinds of research reports. At the same time it also points to differences in
the weighting the authors give to the research and practice contexts in their texts, revealing differences in their
approach to research.


Keywords: EFL Research Articles, qualitative research, pragmatic politeness, face threatening acts,
recontextualisation




1 Introduction

1.1 Pragmatic politeness as a research tool

The present analysis examines how articles in the field of EFL research represent the
teaching – learning context they investigate, and this is explored focusing on the writers’ use
of pragmatic politeness in the examined texts.

The analysis relies on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) concept of pragmatic politeness,
which explains the use of indirectness in spoken interactions as a systematic way of attending
to listeners’ (or speakers’) face wants. In Brown and Levinson’s explanation, certain kinds of
social acts (such as, e.g., criticism or requests) by their nature run against these wants and
threaten either our positive face, i.e. our desire to be approved of, or our negative face, i.e. our
desire to be unimpeded. In redressing such impositions, or Face Threatening Acts (FTAs)
speakers systematically resort to a range of strategies. These, in Brown and Levinson’s (ibid.)
categorisation, constitute a hierarchy: speakers might “go bald on record” with the FTA, i.e.
do it without any redress; they may employ positive or negative politeness strategies, the
former emphasising solidarity, common ground or agreement with the other interactant, the
latter attempting to distance or minimise the imposition by, for instance, impersonalisation or
hedging; they might choose to do the FTA “off record”, i.e. implicitly, or – if the FTA is
perceived as too great – they might not do it at all.

These principles and categories were extended to the analysis of written discourse by
Myers (1989), showing that politeness strategies operate in written texts similarly to the way
they do in spoken discourse, and account for many ‘conventional’ features in Research

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Articles. The nature of the impositions, or Face Threatening Acts, in this genre is constituted
by the claim the researcher makes, and his/her denial of others’ claims. Myers (ibid.) defines
the concept of ‘claim’ in the following way:

Every scientific report states a claim: in other words, it makes a statement that is to be taken as the
article’s contribution to knowledge. This is the statement that is implied when one cites the article. Most
reports, in stating a claim, deny or supersede the claims of others. (p.5)

In his analysis Myers focuses on how claims are redressed by the authors’ use of both
positive and negative politeness strategies, i.e. by different ways of emphasising solidarity or
common ground with the reader and by various kinds of impersonalisation and hedging. This
analysis of the way politeness strategies are employed to mitigate the imposition caused by
the article’s claims provides a lens through which important characteristics of the practices
represented in the article (i.e. the practice of doing research and that of reporting on it in the
form of an article) can be revealed. On the basis of his analysis of Research Articles within
the ‘hard’ discipline of molecular biology, Myers describes a two-part audience structure
consisting of an ‘exoteric community’, i.e. members of the discipline in the more general
sense, to whom the article is overtly addressed, and an ‘esoteric community’, i.e. the
researchers more closely involved in the particular field, “who, in a sense, ‘overhear’”
(Myers, 1989, p.3). He shows how the face needs of the first group are in the foreground of
the authors’ use of pragmatic politeness even though the more important – and possibly only
– readers of their texts are the ‘narrower’ group of researchers who are doing similar work.

The present study applies this lens to the ‘soft’ field of EFL research, with a special
focus on the ways the investigated teaching practice is represented in the analysed texts. It
aims to discover how politeness strategies are used to redress the impositions caused by the
claims on the participants of this practice, and what this reveals about the authors’ approach to
research.

This focus entails two kinds of limitations on the concept and scope of pragmatic
politeness, both resulting from the fact that politeness ‘per se’ is not the topic of the present
analysis. Firstly, it applies Brown and Levinson’s (1987) categories and their extension to
written discourse by Myers (1989) without dealing with the debates in politeness theory
concerning Brown and Levinson’s model. Secondly, since politeness in the broader and
perhaps more interesting sense of how writers construct their relationship with their actual
readers throughout the text is not the primary focus of this chapter, issues of face other than
those relating to the writers’ claims and to the participants in the represented contexts are not
dealt with. In other words, the scope of pragmatic politeness is narrowed, on the one hand, to
Myers’ (1989) framework focusing on the imposition caused by the authors’ claims; on the
other hand, by modifying this framework to include a focus on the ‘investigated practice’ – an
aspect which is new and additional as compared with Myers’ (1989) analysis – the scope is, in
a sense, further narrowed so that the representation of the investigated practice receives the
major emphasis.


1.2 Three levels of context in EFL Research Articles (RA)

The distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ disciplines (Hyland, 1998; 1999; 2000) is of
special importance when looking at research reports as representations of different levels of
context, or social practice (cf. Fairclough, 1992, 2003; van Leeuwen, 1993). Viewed from this
perspective, RAs in the ‘hard’ sciences, concerned with phenomena of the natural world,

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include two kinds of social practice, or two levels of context: the (literacy) practice of writing
RAs, within which the practice of doing research is represented. This highly conventionalised
genre has been studied from a variety of perspectives focusing on its origins, development,
textual and socio-rhetorical characteristics (cf. e.g. Bazerman 1988; Berkenkotter & Huckin
1995; Myers 1985, 1989; Swales 1990; Dudley-Evans 1988, 1994, 1997), highlighting the
complex, dynamic relationships within and across these two levels of represented context.

In research reports in the ‘soft’ domains, however, – in Hyland’s (1998) terms, in
“human action” research – the investigated phenomena are social practices in their own right,
and as such constitute a further, third level of represented practice. This level of the
representation, that is, the investigated practice, receives special emphasis in the research
approaches grouped together under the heading of qualitative or ‘naturalistic’ (cf. Watson-
Gegeo, 1988; Davis, 1995; McDonough & McDonough, 1997; Edge & Richards, 1998;
Holliday, 2002). Within the qualitative orientation, individual approaches differ in the kind of
weighting they give to the ‘research’ and ‘investigated’ practice in the representation, in other
words, to ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ perspectives, or generalisable and idiosyncratic aspects of
the research (Edge & Richards, 1998).

The present analysis aims to discover such differences of stance by examining four
articles reporting on research in the field of ELT, all of which use a qualitative approach. All
four articles appeared in the TESOL Quarterly, and rely on the clearly defined criteria for
qualitative research published in the journal (TESOL Quarterly, 1995; Davis 1995). These
criteria emphasize an explicit conceptual framework for the research, a contextualised and
holistic representation of the researched phenomenon (“thick description”), a balance of
insider and outsider perspectives and the formulation of “grounded theory” emerging from the
research. Notwithstanding these explicit requirements, there are still significant differences of
stance between the individual research reports adopting them.

The focus of the present analysis of the chosen texts is on discovering how the four
authors position themselves vis-à-vis the specific teaching – learning context(s) they are
investigating; to what extent the members of their investigated practice are included as
expected readers of their articles, and what this reveals about the “researcher’s stance” the
authors take in their reports.


1.3 Description of the texts and the nature of imposition constituted by the claims

The four research articles analysed below investigate some aspect of classroom
practice, three of them through direct observation and analysis of classroom discourse, and
one (Text 3) by exploring students’ opinions through interviews. They all start by locating the
problem area within the background of previous research, then proceed to the description of
the specific context of the investigation, and broaden the specific focus again towards the end
of the texts, where the contextualised claims of the research emerge as “grounded theory”.
From this, two characteristics of the claims made in studies can be inferred: that they emerge
and strengthen gradually, as is inherent in the nature of qualitative research, and – since
research of this kind is normally directed at uncovering some controversial or problematic
aspect of the investigated practice – that they contain at least as much, if not more, of an
imposition for the participants in the observed practice and other practitioners operating in
similar contexts as for the ‘research community’ in the traditional sense. The way the authors
deal with these impositions on members of the investigated practice throughout their texts is

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expected to indicate – at the level of a hypothesis – possible tendencies in the representation
of participants and investigated contexts in such texts; at the same time, it is also expected to
reveal the kind of weighting the authors give to the ‘researcher’s’ and ‘practitioner’s’
perspective within a broadly formulated qualitative orientation to research.

Figures 1 to 4 below provide a brief summary of the four articles and their major
claims.

Figure 1: Summary of Text 1 (“Performed conversations in an ESL classroom”)

This article analyses a dialogue between the teacher and one of her students in class and
examines how effectively this “performed conversation” serves its dual purpose of
communication in and information about the language. During the observed interaction the
teacher initiates a conversation with a student about her weekend, but interrupts her several
times to correct errors, to provide correct structures and vocabulary and to involve the class in
repetition drills. The article focuses on the multiple roles performed by the teacher and the other
participants in the dialogue, explores the various functions such interactions fulfil in the class
and, based on the analysis, critiques the effectiveness of this type of activity for learners.
The major claim of the article, namely that this kind of interaction does not promote the
improvement of speaking skills, is clearly face-threatening for the observed teacher and for other
practitioners engaging in similar practices. The claim emerges gradually in the text, reaching its
weightiest and most explicit formulation at the end of the article.


Figure 2: Summary of Text 2 (“Cooperative learning: Context and opportunities
for acquiring academic English”)

This article contains a number of similarities with Text 1, concerning its topic
(evaluation of the effectiveness of a particular teaching approach), the method used (analysis of
classroom discourse) and the approach taken to research. It investigates how successfully the
principles of Cooperative Learning, a method of instruction based on problem-solving in
groupwork in the classroom, are used to promote non-native learners’ acquisition of academic
English in a social studies class. First the authors discuss the observed benefits of the method,
then they focus on the potential learning opportunities which were not taken advantage of, and
finally on forms of cooperation which provided negative results. The instances where the method
did not prove successful receive the major emphasis in the final sections of the article.
The authors point out that the results concern both researchers, who are responsible for
developing this teaching method, and practitioners who want to make best use of it. This
indicates that the claims involve two kinds of impositions to be handled: first of all on
practitioners, especially on the teacher observed and her class, but also on the research
community, in emphasising the importance of investigating the local context of the classroom
when implementing new teaching methods.



Figure 3: Summary of Text 3 (“‘Completely different worlds’: EAP and the writing
experiences of ESL students in university courses”)

The authors explore university students’ perceptions of the kind of academic writing
done in EAP writing classes and in disciplinary courses, focussing on the function that source
texts fulfil in the two kinds of writing situations. Based on this, they distinguish between ‘text-
responsible’ and ‘non-text-responsible’ writing, and criticise the latter kind, commonly
associated with EAP classes, for not providing a meaningful degree of linguistic and intellectual
challenge. This very forceful claim, questioning of the validity of these common types of writing
tasks clearly constitutes an FTA for many practitioners involved in EAP instruction. In this
article, too, the claim reaches its weightiest formulation at the end of the text.

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Figure 4: Summary of Text 4 (“An ethnography of communication in immersion
classrooms in Hungary”)

This text is an ethnographic study of some aspects of Hungarian education by a
Canadian researcher. It analyses changing discourse practices in Hungarian schools at the
beginning of the 1990s, occurring in the wake of the large-scale socio-political changes taking
place at that time. The article examines the breakdown of the traditional genre of oral assessment
referred to as ‘recitation’ and its replacement by short student lectures and more open-ended
discussion activities in English-medium history classes in a dual language secondary school. The
two kinds of discourse practices and their sociocultural background are directly compared, and
participants’ experience of both are discussed.
An ethnographic study of this kind, investigating a sociocultural context different from
the author’s own and analysing a traditional practice which is in the process of being phased out
contains a number of inherent FTAs and requires a systematic use of strategic politeness towards
practitioners operating within the described system.


2 Four stages in the development of claims and their redress

The analysis of the use of politeness strategies in the examined texts enabled the
construction of a tentative, four-stage model (see Chart 1 in the Appendix). This model shows
that the systematic use of pragmatic politeness highlights basic characteristics of qualitative
research reports, such as the shifts of focus between the ‘research’ and ‘practice’ contexts and
the process of the gradual emergence of the major claims. These stages are described in detail
below.

It is an interesting characteristic of the analysed texts that they contain two kinds of
claims. There is a ‘general claim’, stressing the lack and therefore the necessity of context-
based, qualitative studies in the investigated topic, focused on in the introductory sections and
to some extent in the final sections of the texts as part of the conceptual framework of the
investigation. This kind of claim is clearly directed at the research community, and is in most
cases redressed in the ways described by Myers (1989). The other, major and more ‘specific’
claim is represented by the answers to the particular research questions posed.


3 Stage I: Establishing the conceptual framework

The passages identified as Stage I comprise the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Methods’ sections
of the articles. These contain extensive reviews of previous research, the citations themselves
functioning as positive politeness towards the research community (Myers, 1989), while the
impositions constituted by the identified ‘gaps’ and ‘counter-claims’ (Swales, 1990) are
redressed by impersonalisation and hedging. In Text 1, for example, the review of previous
research is concluded by a statement pointing out that researchers who do not pay attention to
the meaning making processes in foreign language classrooms “may be ignoring important
insights into improving instructional environments” (p.740). This contains an indication of a
‘gap’ in Swales’ (1990) sense, and also constitutes a face threat which is redressed by
reducing the certainty of the statement through hedging and by impersonalisation (in the sense
that no such researchers are named).

In Text 3, interestingly, the extensive use of such cautious formulations referring to
the authors’ own previous research indicates that the article ‘takes over’ and intends to

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substantiate the authors’ previous claims. The major outcome of this previous study, serving
as the initial claim of the text, is very cautiously formulated:

Thus, the 1994 study suggests that some ESL writing classes may require little of the type of writing
that students will be expected to do in their content courses. Yet the assumption in these ESL writing
classes seems to be […] (p.42)


4 Stage II: Describing the setting and the participants

In Stage II, the focus shifts from the theoretical framework and the research
community to the description of the investigated practice. In the three articles based on direct
classroom observation (Texts 1, 2 and 4) there is a very noticeable emphasis at this stage on
showing this practice in a positive light by expressing appreciation, sympathy, solidarity or
gratitude and/or by accentuating common ground with the participating teachers. These
descriptions of the context, therefore, rely predominantly on positive politeness strategies, but
also on some degree of indirectness in ‘toning down’ less positive characteristics. This
emphasis on solidarity and common ground with the participants is most characteristic of
Text 4, the ethnographic study, as shown by the following extracts:

[…] after class or whenever the teachers were free, they graciously entertained my questions1 about
content, materials or events that had transpired in class […] Time was always at a premium, though, as
Hungarian teachers had heavy teaching loads at school – and D[ual] L[anguage] teachers had the
added burden of preparing materials and lessons in English; many also had other jobs and family
responsibilities. (p.511)

The DL headmaster was extremely helpful and supportive of my presence and work at that school, and
we frequently discussed issues of common interest related to language education, acquisition and
testing. (p.511)


The secondary school where the ethnographic study was carried out is described as a
“spacious, bright, modern two-storey facility”, which “enjoyed some of the best resources –
teachers, materials and equipment” (p.511). These details with the primary purpose of setting
the scene also function as pre-emptive redress of less positive features mentioned later on in
the text, such as the description of the history textbook:

[…] a soft-cover, monochromatic Hungarian publication made with low-grade paper and binding; the
English versions [...] contain numerous typographical and translation errors. (p.516).


The ‘protagonist’ of the study, the history teacher, is also described in appreciative
terms, as someone “with a passion for history”, considered by the students “to be the best
history teacher at the school” (p.512). The emphasis on these qualities ‘cushion’ the FTA
constituted by the mention of her less than perfect English pronunciation, which is also
redressed in the following way:

Kati’s English pronunciation was somewhat accented, influenced by Hungarian first-syllable word
stress, intonation contours, and vowels, and she had spent only a matter of weeks in any English-
speaking country; that being the case, her EFL was quite remarkable. (p.512)



1 Emphasis (italics) added throughout.

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In describing the investigated context Text 1 also expresses solidarity and sympathy
with language teachers, as it appears from the choice of lexis in the following description of
the complex and difficult tasks they are faced with:

Language teachers wrestle with the dual demands of their students – demands for opportunities to
negotiate meaning authentically […] and for explicit instruction and controlled practice. (p.741)

As I argue below, the resolution to the problem of accommodating these multiple goals in the classroom
is apparent in the discourse patterns of the lessons […] (p.741)


The description of the students, too, has a positive overtone, with an indirect
indication that some of them are not very fluent speakers:

The teacher described the students as knowing a lot about English grammar from previous foreign
language instruction in their home countries but having had little opportunity to actually use English.
(p.742)


It is interesting to compare this with another, more direct reference to the students’
language competence later on in the text:

Their task is not an easy one, particularly if their English proficiency is rather low, as is the case for a
few of the students. (p.758)

This example shows how the writer’s focus changes as the text progresses, the
discussion gains depth and points become more specific, as the second statement also
expresses solidarity with students by highlighting the difficulty of the task they are faced
with.

In Text 2, the description of the setting contains both positive and negative politeness
strategies towards the participants. The research, as the authors describe, was carried out in a
“culturally diverse elementary school”, where “more than one third of the students received a
free or reduced price lunch and breakfast”. The students “exhibited few problems with their
morphosyntactic command of basic English”; some were “fluent” speakers, while others were
“limited” and one “a non-English speaker” (pp.258-59). The sociological and linguistic
terminology used here displays a certain degree of indirectness (i.e. a distancing strategy)
concerning qualities with negative connotations, such as poverty or problems with the
language. In the same section, the teacher is also briefly described and given
acknowledgement:

[...] the social studies teacher whose class is examined here […] was recognized as a good teacher
(p.258).

These emphatically positive descriptions of the setting at the outset have a redressive
function in later parts of the texts where the claims, and their inherent impositions, are
formulated more explicitly.

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5 Stage III: Working towards the claims

The explicit formulation of the major claims takes place in a step-by-step process
throughout the ‘Data analysis’ and ‘Discussion’ sections of the articles. Viewed through the
lens of pragmatic politeness, this gradual emergence of the claims as “grounded theory”
involves an increasing tension between the need to go “bald on record” with the claim (cf.
Brown & Levinson, 1987; Myers, 1989) and mitigating the imposition entailed. Therefore,
politeness strategies are also used in a step-by-step fashion, with earlier, more cautious
formulations ‘cushioning’, and in this way enabling more explicit statements in later parts of
the texts. The examples below show how the use of politeness in Stage III prepares the
ground for the overt and emphatic formulation of the claims in the final parts of the texts. The
first three examples illustrate how the FTA becomes increasingly explicit, or how it is kept
implicit, primarily through the authors’ lexical choices; the rest of the examples show the use
of negative politeness strategies in distancing the FTA from the author and from participants.


5.1 Increasing explicitness of the FTA expressed by lexical choice

In Text 1 the analysis of the conversation in focus between the teacher and the student
illustrates the growing tension and the student’s frustration as the teacher’s corrections and
grammar drills get in the way of the interaction. The author’s reporting of the conversation
parallels this process: the tone of the report changes from neutral and factual to more and
more openly critical. At the beginning, the student “says” something, the teacher “responds”
(p.745), and “brings in the rest of the class as audience” (ibid.), later she “interjects herself
into the conversation” (p.753), and the student’s answer “implies irritation at having to repeat
the same information” (ibid.). The teacher “continues to probe [the student] for story details”
and she has “basically taken over the telling of her story” (ibid.). The student is “balking at
not being able to tell the story without being interrupted” (pp.753-754). At this point the
author includes a comment made to her by the student at a different time about her impatience
with this class. The analysed interaction ends with the teacher expressing her disappointment
that the student did not get much chance to practice her English over the weekend. The author
adds: “Ironically, the same could be said about this lengthy conversation”. (p.755).

In interpreting her data, and taking the discussion one step further towards theory, the
author makes the above statement even more explicitly:

[...] this kind of discourse does not allow the students much opportunity for practicing conversational
skills (p.757).

This leads to the Conclusions, where the claim reaches its strongest and most explicit
formulation.

In a similar example of describing a problem in increasingly explicit terms in Text 2
the authors describe group work in the observed class not functioning as intended. They first
point out:

[...] the way the teacher structured the groups was not always how the groups functioned. (p.272)

A few lines further there is a more specific formulation:

[…] completely cooperative structures [...] were not fully enacted (p.272)

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Somewhat later in the text, it is stated explicitly that on several occasions this set-up
did not work at all:

There was variability in the degree to which the completely cooperative structures broke down [...];
there were “partial breakdowns” and “complete breakdowns”. (p.273)


5.2 Off-record FTA expressed by lexical choice

In Text 4, implicit evaluation of the traditional classroom practice of recitation
(“felelés” in Hungarian) representing an off-record FTA for the proponents of this practice, is
present throughout the comparison of the two kinds of speech events in the focus of the
article. The imposition is present by connotation, i.e. through the lexical choices associated
with discipline and authoritarianism in the case of recitation, and with interest and motivation
in the case of the more recently adopted practice of student lectures. During recitation, as the
author describes, students are “normally restricted to their textbook” (p.519), “not [...] at
liberty to consult just any reference materials” (ibid.), they should “speak in a[n] [...]
unfaltering manner” (p.521), the teacher’s role is “to interrogate the reciter” (p.522) and the
student is “required to [...] ignore the rest of the class” (p.523). In the student lectures, by
contrast, “control over information sources was somewhat relaxed” (p.519), “access to
interesting source materials on loan [...] motivated students to volunteer [...]” (ibid.), the
students have “more control over the event and less at stake” (p.522) and during the lecture
they are “bombarded with interventions from eager classmates” (ibid.).
In Text 3, an article characterised by the gradual unfolding of an especially forceful
claim (see Figure 3 above), the first sign of the coming criticism of ‘non-text responsible’
writing tasks so commonly used in EAP classes is also formulated in an off-record manner, by
referring to these tasks as requiring students to produce “long, flashy sentences or stylish
turns of phrase” (p.54). After this, the criticism becomes stronger but is still indirect. The
students’ perception of having to produce content that is both clear and interesting to the
readers is described in the following way:

Pleasing readers and providing just enough information for them to understand [...] sometimes proved
baffling and mysterious. Some writers seemed to feel they were operating in the dark. (p.55)

The shift of focus in the text towards the shortcomings of the described practice
becomes more and more noticeable, but critical statements are still carefully redressed. The
positive experiences described in the interviews are referred to as “[students] feeling pleased
that at least some of what they were learning [...] was proving to be useful” (p.55).

In the next section of the article, moving from data analysis to pedagogical
implications, the authors’ focus shifts further towards overt criticism, but redress, including a
high degree of indirectness and hedging, is still present:

The students we interviewed appeared to perceive their EAP writing classes as helping them develop
linguistically, but it is difficult to see how they helped these ESL students produce writing based on a
reality external to their own thoughts […] [p.61].

This is followed by overt and emphatic statements in the final chapter in which the
authors “question the validity” of these tasks which “infantilise” students (p.63).

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5.3 Distancing negative content from the participants

The major FTA for the observed practitioners, constituted by the description and
interpretation of problematic or unsuccessful aspects of the investigated practice, needs a
consistent way of redress. One such strategy employed in all of the examined texts is that the
teacher is either completely removed from the description, or is impersonalised into a ‘general
agent’ (e.g. “teachers”) when unsuccessful outcomes are described. At the same time, s/he is
specifically mentioned in positive contexts, these positive contexts themselves sometimes
being included with a clearly redressive purpose.

In Text 2, in the analysis of the instances when students did not cooperate successfully
or did not work together at all during the observed activities, the authors remove the agent
who set up the tasks:

Students’ focus on completing tasks [as opposed to checking the appropriacy of their solutions] can be
understood in the larger context of the assignments, which tended to emphasize finishing the tasks
(p.271).

A few lines further down, however, in a different context, the teacher is mentioned
specifically:

Mrs. Parker collected the notebooks at the end of each grading period (ibid.).

In a footnote her intentions in doing so are also given acknowledgement:

She felt that the emphasis on order and maintaining the notebook for a grading period would help the
students learn a skill that would serve them well [...] (ibid.).

Similarly, another observed reason for the breakdown of cooperation in the lessons is
first described impersonally:

[…] the content was experienced by the students as difficult […] (p.273)

On the same page, the difficulty of tasks is mentioned in a more positive context and
the teacher is personalised:

Difficult tasks that Mrs Parker asked the student to carry out in challenging ways [...] seemed to
provide high potential/ high risk opportunities.

In Text 3, when describing the different kinds of writing tasks examined, the agent
behind these tasks – i.e. the teacher – is consistently kept out of focus. This distancing is most
conspicuous in the description of tasks where a source text is used as a springboard of ideas.
‘Having a source text’ takes on the role of agent in the passage: “it stirred strong emotional or
intellectual reactions”, “it allowed them to write a longer text” (p.51), to the point of
becoming completely personalised:

Even if the students understood the source texts, they created other restrictions. (p.51.)

At the same time, the positive qualities the students associate with the writing class
and the teacher are given a lot of emphasis: “a friendly place”, “the teacher is sympathetic to
and knowledgeable about [students’] problems”, “a valuable experience” (pp.52-53); and the
mention of the arbitrariness and lack of relevance of the writing topics is redressed by an
overt apology: “but these characterizations should not be construed as complaints [...]” (p.53).

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