Post-predicate that-clauses controlled by verbs in native and non-native academic writing - A corpus-based study

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Franzy

Post-predicate that clauses signal evaluative language by reflecting writers’ attitudes, positions, and personal evaluations in academic discourse. This corpus-based study examines the distribution and the most frequently used controlling verbs in verb-controlled post-predicate that clauses (VTHAT) in Turkish learners’ English academic writing, and compares them with native English students and expert writers. Results show both L2 and native students overuse VTHAT versus expert writers, while Turkish students use them more than native peers.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Abstract

Keywords

Data Availability Statement

| | | | --- | --- | | Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1), 18–33 (2021) [https://doi.org/10.29140ajal.v4n1.486](https://doi.org/10.29140ajal.v4n1.486) | | | Post-predicate that-clauses controlled by verbs in native and non-native academic writing: A corpus-based study | | | SAMET TAŞÇI a
YUSUF ÖZTÜRK b
a Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University, Turkey b Muş Alparslan University, Turkey
[samettasci@nevsehir.edu.tr](samettasci@nevsehir.edu.tr) [y.ozturk@alparslan.edu.tr](y.ozturk@alparslan.edu.tr) | | | Abstract
Post-predicate that clauses are one of the indicators of evaluative language which shows the attitude, position, and personal evaluation of the writers in academic discourse. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the distribution and frequently used controlling verbs of post-predicate that clauses controlled by verb (VTHAT) in academic writings of Turkish learners of English and to compare them with those of native English students and expert writers. For this purpose, a specialized research corpus with three main sub-corpora was compiled: MA and PhD theses written by L2 students and native English students and published research articles written by native experienced writers. The results of the study showed that both L2 and native English students significantly overused VTHAT structures compared to the native experienced writers; however, Turkish students used VTHAT structures more frequently than their native peers in academic discourse. The analysis of the controlling verbs in VTHAT constructions showed that eight out of the 10 top frequent verbs in the Turkish students’ theses were common across either three or two sub-corpora. However, there were various significant differences in the frequencies of these controlling verbs between the subcorpora, which can imply that Turkish students use such constructions to have a low authoritative presence in terms of their authorial stance in academic writing. The findings were discussed with reference to the previous findings, and pedagogical implications were offered.
Keywords: that-clauses, evaluative that, evaluation, academic writing, corpus-based | | | Introduction
Academic genre is expected to be purely objective and informative, supported by proof; however, it may not be as objective as it is thought. Academic writing is evaluative and interpersonal rather than | | Copyright: © 2021 Samet Taşçı & Yusuf Öztürk. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within this paper. simply informational and objective (Hyland & Tse, 2005a) . In other words, in academic writing, writers not only express the objective facts but also evaluate the results, comment on the findings (Hyland and Tse, 2005a) and try to persuade the readers “by claiming solidarity with readers, evaluating their material and acknowledging alternative views” (Hyland, 2004, p. 13) . Thus, the writers express evaluation by proposing an idea, stating “a personal opinion”(Hunston, 2010, p.12), adopting “an attitude,” “engagement,” and “graduation”(Martin & White, 2005, p.35), and building and maintaining relations with the readers in their writing (Thompson & Hunston, 2000, p.8) . By using evaluative language, the writers define their position in their writings. Du Bois (2007) noted that evaluation is one of the acts of stance-taking. Evaluation in academic discourse is subjective and shows the attitude of the writer (Hunston 1994) . In the literature, evaluative language has been studied under different titles such as evaluation (Thompson & Hunston, 2000), stance (Biber & Finegan, 1989), appraise (Martin & White, 2005), metadiscourse (Biber 2006; Hyland, 1998; Hyland & Tse, 2004; Crismore, 1989), senti

FAQs

What does the study focus on in academic writing?

It investigates post-predicate that clauses controlled by verbs (VTHAT), treating them as indicators of evaluative language that express attitude, position, and personal evaluation.

How was the research corpus organized?

The study compiled a specialized research corpus with three sub-corpora: MA/PhD theses written by L2 students and by native English students, and published research articles written by native experienced writers.

What key finding relates L2 and native writers to VTHAT usage?

Both L2 and native English students significantly overused VTHAT structures compared to native experienced writers, and Turkish students used VTHAT more frequently than their native peers.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Franzy