Beliefs influence on author’s voice in an L2 argumentative text

Abstract

This study explores university students’ beliefs, their influence when writing an argumentative text in English as a foreign language, and the expression of their author’s voice. The sample is composed of 3rd and 4th year students from an English Teaching Programme in Chile. To collect data, we administered the Writing Beliefs Inventory by White and Bruning (2005), and students wrote an argumentative text, which was assessed using an especially designed rubric. Additionally, the author’s voice from the texts produced was analyzed based on the framework provided by Castelló, Corcelles, Iñesta, Bañales and Vega (2011). Once the differences among students’ beliefs and their written texts were classified, described and compared, transmissional and transactional beliefs were identified with medium transactional –low transmissional dimension predominating among 4th year students, while medium transmissional– low transactional dimension predominated among 3rd year students. Students classified as high transactional –low transmissional were found to be more skillful at constructing their identity and expressing their author’s voice. Identifying students’ beliefs and degrees of author’s voice expression has implications for the explicit construction of authorship and L2 writing education in ways it can help prevent repetition and plagiarism in their academic writing tasks.