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Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 16. Number 4, December 2025 Pp. 148-164
Writing a thesis in a foreign language is challenging. In this process, evaluation of prior academic works in the Literature Review has always been a painstaking task that poses challenges for writers. Due to a paucity of studies on how writers evaluate other scholars’ works in their Master of Arts theses, this study aims to explore how Vietnamese postgraduate students in English Language Studies and English Language Teaching programs utilize the Engagement system within the Appraisal framework to navigate through scholarly discourse in their Literature Reviews. A corpus of extracts from the Literature Review sections of 20 Master theses written in English was accordingly analyzed, using the UAM Corpus Tool. The findings show that the linguistic resources of Heterogloss outnumbered those of Monogloss. Strategies of Expand category such as Attribute, particularly Acknowledge, were widely used to engage with external perspectives. Meanwhile, the remaining linguistic resources were employed with significantly lower frequency, implying either hesitancy or limited familiarity with these rhetorical tools. These insights illuminate the dialogic engagement practices of Vietnamese novice academic writers and simultaneously point towards the need for explicit instruction in the use of Engagement to foster critical evaluation and rhetorical effectiveness. Finally, the study comes up with pedagogical implications and substantive conclusions regarding the use of these resources
Vo, L., Le, L.V., & Pham, M. (2025). Engagement in Thesis Writing: An Appraisal Analysis of EFL Student Writers’ Evaluation of Prior Academic Works. Arab World English Journal, 16(4): 148-164
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Dr. Lien-Huong Vo is a senior lecturer of Linguistics and Translation Studies at Hue University, Vietnam. Her research expertise pertains to linguistics and applied language studies. She is also interested in integrating linguistic theories into teaching the English language and literature in the EFL context. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7922-7416
Long Viet Le (MA) is a lecturer at Faculty of English, Hue University, Vietnam. His research interests include Linguistics and TESOL, with a recent focus on corpus linguistics and the emerging trend of Discursive News Values Analysis.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5527-4810
Mai-Duyen Pham (MA) is a lecturer at Can Tho University, Vietnam. She is currently pursuing the study leading to the doctoral degree in Linguistics at Hue University. Her research project is related to a linguistic comparative study of attitudinal language in cinematic discourse of Vietnamese-language and English-language movies. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4387-8424