An appraisal perspective on students’ use of attitudinal resources in university EFL academic oral presentations

Abstract

Research in evaluative language classroom becomes paramount to improving students’ critical skills. Despite this fact, studies on the evaluative language of EFL students’ attitudinal resources in Indonesian universities remain tenuous. This study aims to examine the attitudinal resources in fiction book reviews by EFL students for academic oral presentations at an Indonesian private university. The analysis of attitudinal resources in this study is based on the theory of Martin and White (2005). The study applied the systemic functional linguistics approach proposed by M. A. K. Halliday (1994). Data were taken from video recordings and transcripts. The findings show that students expressed all three types of attitudinal resources; Appreciation was used most often, followed by Affect and Judgement. It shows that when reviewing books, students tend to express their appreciation, evaluate the books contents and express their feelings or emotions rather than evaluating the authors’ behaviour or character. In addition, the lexical features used by the students imply criticizing, evaluating, admiring, and praising the quality of the book. The study also found that the students used both positive and negative features. As a result, EFL students need to be empowered in universities as critical thinking skills offer the potential for effective learning that can transform them into professional users of information rather than passive recipients.

Keywords:

• attitudinal resources
• appraisal system
• book review
• systemic functional linguistics
• descriptive qualitative research

1. Introduction

One of the skills that students must possess at a university, based on the 21^st century educational framework, is critical thinking and problem-solving skills (Biruni et al., 2020; Rido et al., 2020; Rido, Kuswoyo, & Nuansa, 2020, 2020; Soffel, 2016), so that they can survive and thrive in the present and future (Bankole-Minaflinou, 2019). Thinking critically means examining ideas, evaluating them against what you already know and making decisions about their worth (Open University in Bankole-Minaflinou, 2019; Wang & Sheepho, 2017).

Consistent with this, the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture formulated that the 21^st century learning paradigm emphasizes the ability of students to gather information from various sources, formulate problems, think analytically and collaborate in solving problems (Daryanto & Karim, 2017). In response, one of the private universities in Lampung Province has incorporated these skills into the curriculum through the Scientific Presentations course, designed to teach students how to describe, analyse, evaluate, and review the quality of a fictional or nonfictional book. Through classroom presentation activities students must be able to review and evaluate a book of their choice and are trained to speak to their peers and professors. In order to get a deeper understanding of how students evaluate, criticize, express an attitude, and give an evaluation of a book or work in an academic presentation course, it is important to discuss the appraisal system. The appraisal is an interpersonal system of meaning concerned with evaluation: the nature of attitudes negotiated in a text, the intensity of the feelings involved, and the manner in which values are inferred and readers or listeners aligned (Martin & White, 2005; Ngo & Unsworth, 2015). Martin & White propose the appraisal system (Martin & White, 2005). It provides a method for classifying interpersonal meanings. There is a consensus that the appraisal theory of Martin and White (2005) is the most thorough framework to date (Bilger, 2017). The framework was developed from M. A. K. Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistic (hereafter SFL) approach. In addition, SFL has been widely used as an approach to analysing spoken and written texts in many contexts including classroom discourse (Cahyono & Setyaningsih, 2019; Thompson et al., 2019). In addition to fostering and maintaining interlocutor relationships and structuring discourse, the opportunities for teachers and students to express their ideas, beliefs, and attitudes can reveal their personal values (Martin, 2000) in Badklang & Badklang and Srinon (2018).

Using the appraisal framework in a variety of contexts, a number of scholars have conducted studies on evaluative language (Almeida, 2007; Badklang & Srinon, 2018; Bilger, 2017; Cahyono & Setyaningsih, 2019). However, little research has been done on spoken text. To fill the gap, the present study evaluates an EFL classroom book review presentation using this framework. Therefore, analysis of function of language within the SFL and appraisal framework is essential to language evaluation in order to gain a better understanding of the student’s presentation in terms of how he or she expresses what he or she means through the wording of text. The present study therefore shows resources for attitudinal meaning in Indonesian EFL student presentations and attempts to answer the following questions: How are students’ attitudes expressed in their EFL student book review in a scholarly presentation course?

2. Literature review

2.1 Previous studies

Many previous studies performed evaluative language using appraisal framework on various contexts, including “teacher-student interaction” (Almeida, 2007; Badklang & Srinon, 2018; Bilger, 2017; Cahyono & Setyaningsih, 2019; Rahayu et al., 2020); “news media” (Puspita & Pranoto, 2021); “student” task’ (Morton & Llinares, 2016); and “student” comments (Setyaningsih & Larassati, 2019).

First, Almedia (2007) discussed from the Brazilian context sample of the discourse analysis of two university teachers Mato Grosso, Brazil. This study was aimed to examine the category of affect found in participants’ speech. Data was collected using classroom recordings and interviews. The framework of appraisal by Martin & Rose (2003) & Martin and White (2005) used in this study. The results showed that the teachers expressed positive and negative effects in their discourse. The results also showed that there were many relational processes. The language resources used in classroom conversation, particularly when teacher and students interact and express their attitudinal meanings, were the subject of a study by Badklang and Srinon (2018). According to the data, both the teacher and the students displayed all three types of attitudes, but more positive rather than negative.

Morton and Llinares (2016) examined students’ use of evaluative language in L2 English to speak and write about history in a bilingual educational program. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study focused on how four students use language resources to take an attitude toward learning content and develop an authoritative voice requires them to use evaluative language, that incorporates people, actions, events and processes be treated will be appreciated. Quantitatively, the findings revealed similarities and differences in the use of evaluative language between individual students both across-the cross-sectional and cross the four academic years. Meanwhile, the results showed qualitatively significant differences in their ability to use linguistic resources to construct an appropriate historian’s voice in L2.

In addition, Bilger (2017) conducted his research on appraisal in pre-service teachers’ reflections on their microteaching experience. Using the appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005), this study examined the use of evaluative language in junior English language teaching (ELT) students’ oral comments on their microteaching experiences. In addition, this study also uncovered how students’ use of evaluative language aligns with their cultural orientation. Results showed that of appraisal framework systems, student-teachers used the attitude system more often than the engagement and graduation systems. The findings also showed that the participants’ language choices correspond to a large extent to their Turkish cultural orientation. The last, Cahyono and Setyaningsih (2019) examined how a lecturer positions his attitude when evaluating his students’ writing tasks. This is a descriptive qualitative method using a library study. Unlike other studies, this study used the Hood’s (2010) appraisal system. The results showed that the lecturer evaluated his students’ work using three subsystems of attitude, including evaluation, appreciation, and affect. In addition, the professor provided criticism and suggestions in the form of good and negative evaluations. In line with previous studies, another gap is identified. This study fills the gap by examining the evaluative language of presenting student book review.

2.2. Theoretical framework

The appraisal system is suggested by Martin and White (2005). It provides a way to categorize interpersonal meanings. Interpersonal meaning becomes important when students and students, lecturers and students interact, take turns, and exchange meaning in roles to convey ideas (Kuswoyo et al., 2021).

This system was developed by M. A. K. Halliday (1993), M. A. K. Halliday’s (1994) and M. A. Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). The appraisal is a system of interpersonal meanings that is “concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers or listeners aligned” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p. 25). In addition, interpersonal meaning has a clause as a core resource such as graduation, attitude, and engagement to expressing meanings (Lai, 2010; Martin, 1992, 2000; Oteíza, 2017; Thompson, 2014; Wihadi et al., 2018). In the context of the current study, the authors focus on the attitudinal resources of meaning that students use for presentation during the lesson. The Appraisal framework is divided into three semantic areas, namely Attitude, Graduation, and Engagement. An overview of appraisal system and attitudinal positioning are clearly shown in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1. An overview of appraisal system (Martin & White, 2005, p. 38).

Figure 2. An overview of the attitudinal positioning (Imelwaty et al., 2022).

The first is attitudinal meaning. It describes thoughts, feelings, and emotional reactions, as well as character assessments of individuals and assessments of things such as processes or goods. The speaker’s or writer’s feelings, whether pleasant or bad, or the feelings they attribute to another, can have an affective meaning. The second is graduation meaning. It deals with the resources of grading the feeling of someone or something, and the last is Engagement meaning. It refers to the sources that characterize the speaker’s or writer’s voice as it positions itself in relation to, and therefore engages with, the other voices and alternative positions considered to be in the current communicative event. However, the present study focuses only on the system of attitude. In other words, the attitude domain is selected as one of three semantic domains as the main analysis tool for the language evaluation. Figures 1 and Figure 2 show that there are three types of attitudinal systems, namely appreciation, affect, and judgement. Affect deals with people’s feeling. The judgment relates to people’s character, and appreciation deals with the value of things.

3. Methods

3.1. Research design

This study applied a qualitative research design in which the authors performed a video recording and transcription to examine the attitudinal resources in reviews of fiction books by EFL students for academic oral presentations at an Indonesian private university. The video recordings and transcripts were obtained through zoom meeting in the virtual classroom. In this study, the roles of authors are not only as researchers but also they role as lecturers of Scientific presentation course where the data were obtained. Thus, the attitudinal resources phenomenon arose when they taught the course. A descriptive analysis was used to analyse the data obtained. According to Creswell (2007) and Merriam (2009), descriptive analysis deals with a natural setting.

3.2. Participants and setting

The participants in this study were three Indonesian sixth- semester EFL students majoring in English literature. They were non-native English students, two women, and one man. Their names were 1) Liza; 2) Emma; and 3) Valdo (anonymous). These students were between 17 and 20 years old. They took a course in scholarly presentation, a course designed for students to describe, critically analyse, evaluate and review the quality of a book, both fiction and nonfiction. Through classroom presentation activities, students were required to be able to review, evaluate a book of their choice, and they were also trained to communicate with their classmates and lecturers. This study selected three students with the highest academic achievement (as determined by their teachers). The transcriptions contained a total of 3 texts with a total of 7,593 words. Regarding research ethics, the researchers obtained informed consent from all participants to ensure that they were aware of all aspects of their participation. That is, only voluntary participations took part in this study. All participants were only asked to write their names and they were kept anonymous so the researchers could not know who they were.

3.3. Data collection

In this study, data was collected from academic presentation of students course book review. Within the appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), the data in this study consists of clauses that are identified, classified, and analysed based on the subcategory of attitude, which includes affect, judgment, and appreciation. In order to analyze attitudinal resources of the students in their presentation, some data collection processes were established. First, to obtain the data, this study used video recording. Data was collected using Zoom meeting video recordings. Second, the three video-recorded presentations were then manually transcribed verbatim. The final part of the process involved the analysis and coding of the transcribed data, taking into account the attitudinal resources based on the framework proposed by Martin and White (2005).

3.4. Data analysis

This study used Bengtson’s (2016) model for data analysis. The model includes four steps, namely 1) decontextualization, 2) recontextualization, 3) categorization, and 4) compilation. First, in the decontextualization step, the authors accessed, downloaded, and transcribed the video recording of the students’ scientific presentation into written text to preserve sense and verify accuracy. In order to obtain reliable data, the authors then asked the peer debriefers to proofread them. After that, the authors understood the results of both manual and automatic transcription. After that, the authors identified the units of meaning. Before considering the transcription into smaller units of meaning, the authors read the transcribed text to get a feel for the whole, and then coded each one using an open coding technique. The coding scheme sample of transcribed text data is shown below.

Excerpt 4 Alex Petroski who is very brave, innocence, ambitious who will change us in seeing the world.

The next step was recontextualization. In this step, the authors rechecked the entire meaning units. In addition, the authors reread the original transcripts along with the identified meaning units. In summary, the authors have chosen to select the information from the important to the unimportant. After that, the authors classified the similar characteristics of data. The third step was categorization. In this stage, the authors identified themes and categories rooted in the data from which they emerge. And the last one was a compilation. In this phase, the authors presented a summary of the themes and categories in bold and italic to allow the reader to easily review the results (Bengtson, 2016). To increase credibility and ensure validity, peer debriefing and member checking were conducted (Creswell, 2007).

4. Results & discussion

4.1. Results

The results of this study have shed light on a research question. They are presented, analysed, and interpreted. Figure 3. shows the results of the research. The distribution of instances and attitudes types of the three students was calculated in percent. Figure 3 shows the proportions of three main types of attitudes in general. The results show that the types of attitude used by these three students in their book review presentation are relatively unbalanced (50.79% appreciation, 38% affect, and 11.11% judgement).

Figure 3. Distribution of three main types of attitude used by the students in their presentation.

The finding shows that appreciation is used most frequently in students’ book review presentation, followed by affect and judgement. This suggests that students used different types of attitudes in the appraisal system because they were required to give a fiction book review presentation, which was designed to describe, critically analyse, evaluate and review a book quality.

As previously explained, the appreciation was used predominantly in the presentation of the book review by three students. Appreciation deals with students’ appreciation of things such as price, quality of a novel, language used, publisher, etc. Often, students would express their attitude toward appreciation of their presentation, mostly positive rather than negative to evaluate objects, including the quality of a novel in general. The following examples illustrate analysis of student’ use of attitudinal resources in EFL book review presentations, namely Judgement, Appreciation, and Affect.

4.1.1. Judgement resource

Judgement deals with the language resources used to evaluate people’s behavior. Based on the data, students rarely used judgement as an appraisal resource. It represents 11.11% of all findings. Students use judgement to deal with evaluating of the behavior of authors and readers. Students’ judgements are coded through the use of words such as quite hard, attractive, introvert, famous, brave, innocence, and ambitious. It could be further noted that the students used positive judgements rather than negative judgements. The judgment toward the authors and the audience or listeners is illustrated in the following excerpts.

Excerpt 1 Maybe all of you is quite hard to understand what kind of the meaning from the Kelly Barnhill itself.

Excerpt 2 So can you imagine how introvert she is?

In Excerpt 1, the student used the underlined word fairly hardly to assess the novel’s difficulty for the readers. In this context, the student refers to the author, Kelly Barnhillfor her high level of writing, especially in her choices of words. Therefore, this can be taken as a negative judgement. In addition, the student in Excerpt 2 expresses his judgement of the author as an introvert.

However, the findings show that a positive judgement was also discovered. They show the characters and behaviour of the authors. To better describe the appraisal analysis, several data samples are provided below showing the appraisal resources are identified in the text.

Excerpt 3 Abby Jimenez is the new famous other that already achieved several awards such as good reads.

Excerpt 4 Alex Petroski who is very brave, innocence, ambitious who will change us in seeing the world.

The words “new famous”, and “very brave, innocence, ambitious” imply the author’s profile. These words refer to the judgements of author. The word “famous” refers to an attribute of the author attributed to her (Abby Jimenez). The words ‘brave, innocence, and ambitious indicate Alex Petroski’s attitude and behavior in the novel. Alex Petroski is one of the characters in the novel. The student expressed these words as positive judgements. Therefore, it is included as the judgement resource.

4.1.2. Appreciation resource

More specifically, appreciation is the most commonly used, accounting for between 50% and 79% of total attitudinal resources. It includes the positive and negative evaluation. The students particularly emphasize the evaluation of the novel as a product such as the price, the languages, the quality etc. It should be noted that when students evaluate their experience, they mostly code positive ratings and the attitudinal lexicon such as successful, good, cheaper, effective, creative, easily, amazing, sure, recommended, and unique as explained in the following excerpts.

Excerpt 5 This book is good for someone who wants to start read an English novel.

Excerpt 6 You can find it out on commerce to cheaper like in Tokopedia, Shopee or any kinds of e-commerce that exist in Indonesia.

Excerpt 7 So, in addition this is an amazing novel published under the Forever Hachette book group, Inc.

Excerpt 8 It’s really recommended because it uses a simple language.

Excerpt 9 And this fourth book is we can say the most successful novel for her.

In the excerpt 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, the students explained introductory part of the books. In this part, they tried to explain the book price, language, and publisher. The words “good”, “cheaper”, “amazing”, “recommended”, “simple”, and “successful” were used by the students to evaluate the language used in the novel. They probably try to convey to the listener or reader that the book is easy to read.

Meanwhile, within the appreciation category, the evaluation was also encoded as negative, including difficult, not reachable, ambiguous, unclear, too long, and not attractive. By far, most of the students took advantage of the language and the ambiguity of the story. The examples are illustrated in the following excerpts.

Excerpt 10 The last is the ambiguous story about fight how the Kelly Barnhill make us being ambiguous what this story.

Excerpt 11 The weaknesses for me is unclear story length

Excerpt 12 Sometimes it hard for us to understand the languages, because the words that used in the novel sometimes quite difficult.

Excerpt 13 The story length is not attractive enough for you

Excerpt 14 The story length is quite too long in this story

As shown in excerpt 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, the students explained the story and language. They rated them on several lexical items, namely “ambiguous”, “unclear”, “hard”, “not attractive”, “too long” and “difficult”. They are probably trying to convey to their listeners or readers that the books have several weaknesses.

4.1.3. Affect resource

The final subsystem of attitudinal resources used by students is affect. It shows a total 38 % in total. Regarding affect, students express both positive and negative feelings through verb phrases and adjectives. From the data, the most commonly used subcategories of affect were positive inclination, followed by happiness, satisfaction, and security. Here are the examples.

Excerpt 15 I will give an example how Kelly Barnhill bring the story how she describes places.

Excerpt 15 above shows that the student expressed a feeling that pertains to his intention rather than his reaction. The student uses affect to describe their desire to set an example of how the author brings the story to life and describes the locations.

Excerpt 16 So we still need dictionary to help us to finish our novel.

Excerpt 16 above is another example of the effect found in the students’ book review presentation. As described in the data above, the underlined word is segmented in effect-inclination. In this regard, the student expressed his negative evaluation in terms of language understanding. This means readers still need a dictionary to look up the difficult words in the novel.

Excerpt 17 You need to read this novel

Based on excerpt 17, the underlined word is divided into affect- inclination. Students use affect to describe their desire for a positive evaluation. The student wanted the readers to read the novel. He considered the novel to be of high quality.

The next affect type found in the data is happiness. It refers to student’s positive feelings about the strength of the novel, the author’s passion, and the genre of the literary work. Besides, it also expresses the feeling of the readers such as like, beloved, and love.

Excerpt 18 That’s way I really like the strength of this novel.

Excerpt 19 Ladies and gentlemen, my beloved friends.

Excerpt 20 She loves writing so much and not leaving house.

Excerpt 21 I think allwill love about romances.

There is also positive satisfaction, another type of affect. It can be seen in the Excerpt 22 below.

Excerpt 22 I highly recommended as well as a millionaire to read this.

Excerpt 22 shows that the recommended lexical features is divided into affect satisfaction. It addresses students’ sense of achievement in relation to the quality of the book that the author has written. On the other hand, negative satisfaction can also be found in the following excerpt.

Excerpt 23 I can not find her deep of works even her education and also the background or so on so far.

Excerpt 24 But for someone who love read a novel with complicated issue or complicated plot, this book is not the answer.

It can be seen by the underlined phrases that “I cannot find” and “this book is not” are classified as affect. This segmentation can be described as affect: dissatisfaction: negative. It indicates that the student is dissatisfied with the author’s information, plot and subject of the story. For excerpt 23, students expect that author to have complete information on their official website or blog. Meanwhile, excerpt 24 points out that the student suggests that the book is not recommended for those who enjoy reading complicated plots and subjects.

In addition, the findings show that security is also present. Security deals with feelings of peace in relation to the environment that we feel and that people share with us.

Excerpt 25 As the expert believe that infertility can increase and can cause the district.

Excerpt 26 And I mean that I think the effort never give up.

Based on excerpt 25 and 26, students express their positive feeling influenced by the experts’ beliefs and part of the story. In excerpt 25, the word “believe” implies that the student has a strong opinion or feeling that is supported by the expert. Meanwhile, in excerpt 26, the word “never give up” is used above to express his feelings about the novel’s story. The sense of security is positively reinforced.

4.2. Discussion

Coupled with the results of previous studies outlined in the literature review, this present study demonstrated how students’ attitudinal resources are represented in their EFL student book review. The results of the present study show that the three sub-types of attitudinal resources, namely appreciation, affect, and judgment resources, were used and identified by the students.

The findings show that students used appreciation resources most frequently, followed by affect and judgment resources. As explained above, the students expressed their appreciation in both positive and negative evaluations. The students emphasized the evaluation of the price, the language used and the quality of the novel as positive evaluations. The attitudinal lexis used are “cheaper”, “effective”, “creative”, “easily”, “successful”, “good”, “sure”, “unique”, and “recommended”. In addition, the students assessed the quality of the novel as mostly positive. On the other hand, regarding the negative evaluation, the students express their appreciation for the language and the story of the novel. Students used several negative words, such as ambiguous, unclear, difficult, hard, not attractive, and too long. This is consistent with the results of research by Bilger’s (2017). The results show that the appreciation resource is the most commonly used by students. In addition, she found in her study that student-teacher appreciation values quality of their micro-teaching. On the contrary, the student-teacher used different lemma in both positive and negative evaluation including “interesting”, “wonderful”, fine’, and “boring”. This certainly differs from the research of Badklang and Srinon (2018) and Cahyono and Setyaningsih (2019). The findings suggest that the judgment resources were most commonly used by teacher and students when the teacher assesses their students’ abilities, characters, and behaviour by praising, warning, and instructing them in the classroom. It also indicates some form of criticism or suggestion. Furthermore, a study by Morton and Llinares (2016) suggested that analysis the appraisal system could lead to the student developing in their use of lexico-resources to express decisions from the appraisal system. In contrast to the research of Setyaningsih and Larassati’s (2019) research, the findings show that affect resources were mainly used in students’ reviews. It shows students’ emotional response to the grammar lessons. According to the current study, inclination was the most common affective resource. It encodes students’ hopes or wishes regarding the grammar teaching and learning process and the outcome of the process.

The findings of the current study show that affect resources were often used after the appreciation resources. The students shared their feelings about their desire to learn how the author brings the story to life and describes the locations. In contrast, The research of Rahayu’s et al. (2020) confirms that the affect resources were commonly used by the teacher in EFL classroom interactions. It indicates that the teacher often expresses his feelings, opinions and emotions through his speech. On the other hand, the present study shows not only the positive evaluations but also the negative ones. This means that the students tried to evaluate and criticize the book. According to Bankole-Minaflinou (2019), critical thinking examines concepts, comprises them to what you already know, and decides whether or not they are worthwhile.

The final attitudinal resource found in the present study is judgment. The findings show that judgment is rarely used as an appraisal resource. In this context, the judgment refers to the language resource of the students to evaluate the behaviours of the authors or characters in the novel. The findings show both positive and negative reviews. Regarding the positive evaluation, the students used several words including “famous”, “brave”, and “attractive”. In contrast, the research results of Cahyono and Setyaningsih’s (2019) show different lemmas such as “better”, “could write”, and “natural”. The words “hard” and “introvert” were used in the present study to refer to the negative evaluation. They refer to author or character judgment. Surprisingly, in Badklang and Srinon (2018) such categories appeared mainly in classroom discourse. In order to stimulate his students’ learning, the teacher conveyed his attitude toward evaluating their abilities.

5. Conclusion

Using the appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005), the main objective of the current study was to examine the attitudinal resources in students’ book review presentations in academic presentation subjects. Two conclusions can be drawn from the findings and discussion. First, this recent study has shown that all of the attitudinal resources are to be found in the students’ scientific presentation. Appreciation is the most commonly used by students, followed by affect and judgment. It can be concluded that when students review books, they tend to express their appreciation, evaluating things like quality of the book, the language, the price, the publisher, etc and their feelings or emotions towards what the story entails, expressing evaluation of the behaviour or character of the author. In addition, both positive and negative characteristics are found. However, the positive properties were mainly used. It suggests that students still need more instruction on how to think than what to think. Additionally, the results of this study suggest that examining students’ use of evaluative language using the appraisal framework can help produce future professionals who can think critically, solve problems, and resolve conflicts to make effective decisions. The second conclusion is that these lexico-grammatical features that the analysis focused on are all related to students selection of meanings from the appraisal framework.

6. Recommendations and future research

The present study examined only one of the three areas of the appraisal framework, so it is better to include graduation or engagement related to evaluative language in students’ academic presentations to see the full dimensions of language evaluation. Furthermore, due to the small number of participants (3 participants), the results of this study must be interpreted with caution. Therefore, another study with a stronger focus on the interaction between students and professors proposed.

This finding has important implications for the development of students’ critical thinking skills, particularly in the context of English as a foreign language. This can be seen in the various lexical features used by students in their book reviews. These are the lexical features that indicate how one thinks critically, including examining ideas, evaluating them against what one already knows and trying to make a decision about their worth. This finding is consistent with the ideas of Bankole-Minaflinou (2019). In addition, it is hoped that this study can provide tools for practicing professors in EFL university contexts to provide more linguistically richer descriptions of the language requirements of critical thinking skills in subjects such as academic presentation.

Acknowledgments

The study reported in this article was conducted under the Universitas Padjadjaran funded postdoctoral program (grant number 2474/UN6.3.1/TU.00/2021).The researchers would like to thank all students who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the The Universitas Padjadjaran funded postdoctoral program [2474/UN6.3.1/TU.00/2021].

Notes on contributors

Eva Tuckyta Sari Sujatna

Eva Tuckyta Sari Sujatna is a professor of linguistics in Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia. Her currently publications are “Training teachers to teach PISA-like reading: A case in Indonesia” (2022), “Using Item Analysis to Evaluate a Teacher-Made PISA-Like Reading Test Model” (2023), and “Readability of PISA-like Reading Texts: A Lesson Learned from Indonesian Teachers” (2023) with Prof. Emi Emilia and Dr. Nia Kurniasih. She can be contacted at [email protected]

Heri Kuswoyo

Heri Kuswoyo is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at English department, Faculty of Arts and Education, Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia and a post-doctoral researcher at faculty sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia. He was visiting researcher at Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Northern Illinois University in 2019. His research interests include classroom discourse, discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics. His most recent publications are ‘Thank You Very Much’: Feedback strategies in university English literature lecture interaction (2022, European Journal of Educational Research) and ‘Let’s take a look … ’: An investigation of directives as negotiating interpersonal meaning in engineering lecture (2021, Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities) with Prof. Eva Tuckyta Sari Sujatna, M.Hum and Akhyar Rido, Ph.D). He can be contacted at [email protected]