EXPLORING WRITER ENGAGEMENT IN ESSAY WRITING: A CASE OF FIRST PERSON PRONOUN “WE”

Abstract

The paper explores the aspect of writer engagement through the emphasis of first person pronoun ‘we’ in essay writing written by Chinese student-writers. The coding of independent and dependent variables on the base of frequency and the classification of clause from the selected writing samples are analyzed in the combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses for we and its interaction with the writing topic. While quantitative analysis mainly measures the association and correlation among the set of variables, qualitative analysis considers the content analysis of text from the embedded roles of ‘we’ and the embedded role of writing topic. This paper also further discusses findings in quantitative analysis from the attention to the emphasis of ‘we’ in academic writing as well as in relevant aspects of text.