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English for Academic Purposes Writers’ Use of Reporting Verbs in  

Argumentative and Cause-and-Effect Essay Exams 

 

Pakize Uludag 

Concordia University 

 

William J. Crawford 

Northern Arizona University 

 

Kim McDonough 

Concordia University 

 

Abstract 

 

The effective use of reporting verbs is an important part of establishing credibility in source-

based writing. Although comparative studies of academic writing have shown that the reporting 

verbs used by novice and expert writers differ by discipline, fewer studies have examined 

whether such differences exist in English for academic purposes (EAP) writing, which often 

focuses on generic essay types as opposed to discipline-specific academic genres. Using a corpus 

of 1027 texts written by EAP students at an English-medium Canadian University, this study 

explored whether additional language (L2) writers’ reporting verb choices differed in cause-and-

effect and argumentative essays. Adopting semantic classifications from previous research, the 

occurrence of 34 reporting verbs across four semantic categories (argue, think, find, show) in the 

two essay types were compared. Results indicated that EAP students relied on a limited number 

of reporting verbs regardless of essay type. In contrast to disciplinary writing, find verbs 

occurred infrequently while argue verbs were most frequent. Pedagogical implications are 

discussed in terms of the relationship between essay type and L2 writers’ use of reporting verbs. 

 

Introduction 

 

Incorporating information from sources into academic writing has been identified as a key 

literacy skill and learning outcome in university writing studies (Haswell, 2000; McAlpine & 

Amundsen, 2011). When composing academic texts, writers typically provide support for their 

arguments through the use of source materials rather than depending solely on their prior 

knowledge or experiences (Gebril & Plakans, 2009; List, Du, & Lee, 2020). Similarly, in English 

for academic purposes (EAP) contexts, where post-secondary students are learning English with 

the goal of studying and carrying out research in that language (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001), 

additional language (L2) writers might be expected to validate their opinions by incorporating 

evidence from sources. Providing such evidence requires that writers introduce, restructure, and 

respond to source information in their texts, which presents distinct challenges as compared to 

writing from prior knowledge. To incorporate citations successfully, writers need not only to 

understand source content but also to establish relevance and authority of source ideas (Petrić & 

Harwood, 2013; Wette, 2010). Researchers have acknowledged that it is difficult for some 

novice L2 writers to articulate coherent understanding of sources (Britt & Aglinskas, 2002; 

Segev-Miller, 2004), which impacts how they evaluate source content. In addition, expressing 

attitudes when attributing information to sources might also be challenging for these writers 

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because integrated writing tasks elicit more sophisticated linguistic features compared to 

independent writing tasks (Cumming et al., 2006; Guo, Crossley, & McNamara, 2013). These 

challenges suggest that instruction should focus on how to use grammatical devices, such as 

reporting verbs, to achieve certain functions within source-based writing (Hyland, 1999). 

However, while teaching L2 writers how to avoid plagiarism using citation conventions receives 

considerable attention in the EAP curriculum, building authorial stance though the use of 

different reporting structures is less emphasized (Borg, 2000; Liardét & Black, 2019).  

 

In academic writing, reporting verbs (e.g., claim, imply, argue) play an important role in 

establishing a writer’s arguments by attributing information to external sources and 

communicating authorial stance (Hunston & Thompson, 2001; Swales, 1990, 2014). While citing 

from sources, writers select verbs that show their stance toward source information to attain 

credibility. Therefore, it is common for experienced writers to use a variety of reporting verbs 

with different functions to establish arguments and convey their perspectives (Hyland, 2002, 

2005; Thompson & Yiyun, 1991). In the case of L2 writers, understanding semantic and 

functional differences among reporting verbs may present a challenge when integrating 

information from sources. Comparative studies of academic writing have shown that the 

reporting verbs used by novice and expert writers differ by discipline (e.g., Harwood & Petrić, 

2011; Lee, Hitchcock & Casal, 2018; Thompson & Tribble, 2001). However, less research has 

examined whether such differences in the use of reporting verbs occur in EAP writing, which 

often focuses on generic essays (i.e., classroom, school, or curricular genres) as opposed to 

discipline-specific academic genres (Swales, 2019).  

 

Because EAP programs accommodate students from a variety of academic disciplines, 

they often focus on academic reading and writing skills through an essayist tradition (Hyland & 

Hamp-Lyons, 2002; Leki & Carson, 1994, 1997). In EAP classes, L2 writers may be asked to 

compose essays with distinct linguistic, structural, and discourse features. For example, 

argumentative essays elicit a goal-directed persuasion process with the use of substantive claims 

in support of a point of view. Writers build on their existing knowledge of argumentative 

discourse, develop arguments, and respond to counterarguments using directives or clear 

exposition (Hayes, 1996; Graham & Harris, 1997) with the help of the instruction that they 

receive in EAP classrooms. Cause-and-effect essays, on the other hand, do not necessarily 

require taking a point of view. Writers draw on a causal discourse and they use linguistic 

expressions of causal relations to reconstruct meaning in their texts (Xuelan & Kennedy, 1992). 

When composing these different essay types, EAP students need to use reporting verbs to 

achieve their discourse-specific goals (e.g., contrasting, emphasizing) and express their stance 

(Freddi, 2005; Hyland, 2002). For example, by using argue as a reporting verb, writers 

acknowledge the plausibility of propositions, whereas claim as a reporting verb signals 

distancing from propositions. Both reporting verbs are considered to be evaluative since they 

indicate epistemic/evidential comment of writers (Hunston & Thompson, 2001). To understand 

such differences, it has been suggested that university-level EAP courses provide students with 

sufficient practice on using a range of reporting verbs to present, criticize, and question source 

information and to express their stance towards the subject matter (Crosthwaite, 2016; Hyland, 

1999; Shin, Velázquez, Swatek, Staples, & Partridge, 2018). 

 

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 A large number of studies have analyzed the occurrence of reporting verbs in disciplinary 

texts through reference to Francis, Huston, and Manning’s semantic classification (1996, pp. 97-

101), which consists of four categories: argue (verbs that are concerned with taking up a 

position), think (verbs that are concerned with a mental activity or feeling), show (verbs that are 

concerned with a fact or situation), and find (verbs that are concerned with coming to know 

something). Examples of verbs in each category are provided in Table 3. Using this framework, 

Charles (2006) found that L1 English writers in politics/international relations and materials 

science used argue verbs most frequently, although they occurred less often in materials science 

than politics (i.e., a social science discipline). Although writers primarily referred to the cited 

authors using argue verbs in both disciplines, the materials science writers also relied on find and 

show verbs (e.g., show, find, observe) when presenting the results and situations. In an L1 

writing development study, Friginal (2013) examined whether using a concordance program 

along with instructional practice impacted forestry students’ development of report writing skills. 

Using the same four categories of reporting verbs, he looked into the frequency distribution of 

reporting verbs used in the corpora and found that in comparison to professional writers, the 

upper-level undergraduate students overused specific reporting verbs with a limited range (e.g., 

show and find) in their research reports. After a two-week instructional practice period, students 

increased their use of reporting verbs in the argue category and relied less on verbs in the show 

category, thereby diversifying their choice of reporting verb structures. 

 

As for research with L2 writers, studies exploring college-level academic texts have 

reported that they tend to use a limited range of reporting verbs when writing from sources, 

which negatively affects their ability to support their arguments in texts (Biber & Reppen, 1998; 

Hinkel, 2003; Pecorari, 2008). In addition, they depend on verbs that are more commonly used in 

speech (e.g., say, know, think) rather than those found in academic writing (Biber, Johansson, 

Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Kwon, Staples, & Partridge, 2018). For example, examining 

semantic differences in first year undergraduate L2 writers’ reporting verb choices, Kwon et al. 

(2018) found that students used a limited range of reporting verbs (e.g., find, think), many of 

which are more commonly used in spoken discourse than academic writing (e.g., say, think, 

know). Using the same corpus as in Kwon et al. (2018), Shin et al. (2018) investigated whether 

undergraduate L2 students’ reporting verb use changed after attending a corpus-based workshop 

about the semantic aspects of reporting verbs. They compared post-intervention texts with 

randomly selected texts from a corpus. The students who participated in the intervention used 

fewer verbs associated with speech rather than academic writing (i.e., say and talk about). 

Overall, these studies have shown that in academic writing, argue verbs are in the majority 

despite variation in task and discipline, reflecting their focus on written communication; 

however, show and find verbs tend to occur less frequently in lower proficiency writers’ texts.  

 

Although previous comparative studies have provided evidence of syntactic and lexical 

complexity variation based on essay type (e.g., Lu, 2011; Yoon & Polio, 2017), studies to date 

have not examined reporting verbs specifically. Despite the growing recognition as to the 

importance of reporting structures in various academic disciplines, there is little research 

examining how L2 writers use reporting verbs in different essay types. For L2 writers to adopt 

appropriate positions that reflect their authorial stance, they need to develop rhetorical awareness 

to attribute information to sources through the use of reporting verbs. In light of the need to 

provide clear descriptions of L2 reporting verb use to identify potential areas for pedagogical 

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attention, the current study investigated the semantic distribution of reporting verbs in EAP 

argumentative and cause-and-effect essay exams. These essays were written by EAP students at 

an English-medium university in Quebec who were simultaneously taking disciplinary courses. 

For readers in British Columbia, it is interesting to note that students in British Columbia’s post-

secondary institutions also complete similar writing tasks that require extended length essays 

with source documentation. For example, one of the learning outcomes of university transfer 

courses offered at Okanagan College and Camosun College is to “incorporate quotations and 

paraphrases effectively into writing and use appropriate citation practices for each” 

(“Articulation guide”, 2019, p. 49). Thus, it is important to shed light on how reporting verbs are 

used in generic essays in EAP courses. The research question was as follows: How frequently do 

EAP writers use reporting verbs from the argue, think, show, and find semantic categories in 

their argumentative and cause-and-effect essays? 

 

Method 

 

The Research Context and Corpus  

 

The argumentative and cause-and-effect essays were sampled from the Concordia Written 

English Academic Texts (CWEAT) corpus (McDonough, Neumann, & Leu (2018), which 

consists of timed writing exams from English L2 students enrolled in an EAP course with an 

instructional focus on source-based writing at Concordia University. The CWEAT corpus 

consists of 1027 argumentative and cause-and-effect essays (over 500,000 words) collected over 

a five-year period. As shown in Table 1, despite a slight variation in the total number of essays in 

each subcorpus, the mean number of words is comparable for both argumentative and cause-and-

effect essays.   

 

Table 1 

 

Words by Essay Type  

 
 

Argumentative  

(n = 551) 

Cause-and-effect  

(n = 476) 

Total words 314,730 244,947 

M 571.16 552.92 

SD 109.38 112.88 

 

The essays were written by undergraduate English L2 students enrolled in the second of 

two, six-credit courses in the EAP program. The students were admitted into undergraduate 

programs, but they were required to take the EAP course based upon their performance on an in-

house university placement test that included a writing component. The EAP course objectives 

involved improving reading and writing skills to prepare students for university level academic 

tasks. The writing component of the course focused on paraphrasing and summarizing skills with 

a specific focus on argumentative and cause-and-effect essays. Following the assessment 

procedures of the EAP program, students wrote two three-hour exams (midterm and final) which 

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required them to integrate information from pre-specified sources included in the course-pack 

and acknowledge the use of these sources through in-text and end-of-text citations. The exams 

targeted different essay types with the midterm exam focusing on a cause-and-effect essay and 

the final exam eliciting an argumentative essay. Two weeks prior to each exam, the students 

were presented with a reading list with six to seven different sources. The EAP instructors were 

encouraged to discuss these sources in class and help students take notes using a note-taking 

template with text fields for notes about source citation, key terms, and lexical items. The exam 

topics were related to the general themes covered in the EAP course. For exam security reasons, 

the prompts cannot be shared, but the distribution of essays by topic has been provided in 

Appendix A. Students could bring one note sheet for each of the six sources and use an English-

only dictionary. Table 2 displays students’ demographic information.  

 

Table 2 

 

Demographic Characteristics of L2 Writers in Each Corpus 

 

Text type Male* Female* Most frequent L1s M Age 

Argumentative  

(n = 551) 

267  

(48.5%) 

262 

(47.5%) 

Chinese (n = 253) 

French (n = 94) 

Arabic (n = 64)  

Persian (n = 16) 

Spanish (n = 16) 

Vietnamese (n = 10)  

Russian (n = 9) 

Other (n = 89) 

22.4 (SD = 4.4.)  

Cause-and-effect 

(n = 476)  

220  

(46.2%) 

231 

(48.5%) 

Chinese (n = 223) 

French (n = 79) 

Arabic (n= 53) 

Spanish (n = 14) 

Persian (n = 16)) 

Russian (n = 12) 

Other (n = 79) 

22.8 (SD = 4.9) 

* Gender was not reported by some of the students 

 

Analysis  

 

The students’ handwritten essays were typed, verified, de-identified, and included in the corpora 

as text files. The frequency and distribution of reporting verbs across four semantic categories 

(i.e., the argue, think, find, and show categories) were identified. The reporting verbs included in 

the analyses were selected from a larger list comprised of 53 verbs (See Appendix B) analyzed in 

Kwon et al., (2018). Using AntConc (Anthony, 2014) for exporting concordance lines, the 

frequencies of the 53 reporting verbs for the entire dataset were calculated. Any instances in 

which a reporting verb was not used in a reporting structure (e.g., Using means of public 

transformation, … vs. The researcher means that…) or used in quotation marks (According to 

the researcher, “the research team found…”) were omitted.  

 

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 Next, the occurrence of all 53 reporting verb lemmas (e.g., write, writing, writes, wrote, 

written) was examined to identify those verbs that had occurred in at least 25 different 

argumentative or cause-and-effect texts (i.e., at least 10% of the texts in each sub corpus). The 

analysis was limited to those 34 reporting verbs to ensure that they were used by a wide range of 

writers in our corpus as opposed to only a few uses by a few writers. As in Kwon et al., (2018) 

and Friginal (2013), the reporting verbs in the final list were classified into different semantic 

categories proposed by Charles (2006). Similar to Kwon et. al. (2018), both raw and normed 

counts per 100,000 words were calculated and reported in the findings. Examples from each of 

these categories as well as the final list of each reporting verb are found in Table 3.  

 

Table 3 

 

Reporting Verbs by Semantic Categories  

 

Categories  Verbs  Examples from the corpus 

Argue (n = 19) argue, suggest, predict, write, 

explain, conclude, mention, admit, 

observe, accept, add, report, claim, 

point out, maintain, say, state, talk 

about, acknowledge 

“Sachs (2005) predicts that if rich 

countries donate 0.7% of their GDP 

donate to the poor, by the year 2025, 

the poverty rate will decrease by 

half.” 

Show (n = 6) show, illustrate, indicate, 

demonstrate, reveal, mean 

“Solomon (2002) revealed that a 

consumer's level of self-esteem can 

be affected by marketing 

communications.” 

Find (n = 5) realize, establish, recognize, 

discover, find out  

“Fuentes-Nieva (2014) has found 

that the 85 richest people in the 

world are richer than the bottom half 

population of the world.” 

Think (n = 4) know, think, hold, feel “Karnani (2007) thinks that poor 

nations could spend more money to 

create more jobs to decrease poverty 

rather than only using microcredit.” 

 

The first researcher coded the entire data to identify the most frequent reporting verbs 

across four semantic categories in each essay type. An independent rater checked the dataset to 

ensure that no instances of the target verbs had been omitted. Any verbs missed by the first 

researcher were then included in the dataset.  

 

Findings 

 

The research question explored EAP writers’ reporting verb use in argumentative and cause-and-

effects essays in terms of the frequency distribution across four semantic categories. As 

illustrated in Table 4, students used reporting verbs at a rate of 908.43 per 100,000 words in 

argumentative essays and 822.41 per 100,000 words in cause-and-effect essays. Taking into 

consideration variation in mean length, students used more than five reporting verbs per 

argumentative text and 4.6 reporting verbs per cause-and-effect text. The overall frequency in 

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both essay types is much lower than both the research reports in Friginal (2013), which contained 

around 1500 reporting verbs per 100,000 words, and Kwon et al., (2018), which contained 

1633.91 per 100,000 words. The lower use of reporting verbs may be related to variation in both 

the writing assignments as well as the writers themselves. Whereas Kwon et. al., (2018) 

investigated literature review assignments, Friginal (2013) focused on undergraduate students’ 

research reports. In these disciplinary writing assignments, students generate new knowledge 

about a topic by providing a comprehensive summary of prior research and using an array of 

sources such as scholarly articles, books, and reports (Torraco, 2005). In contrast, these 

argumentative and cause-and-effect essays limited the writers to a relatively small pool of 

sources (i.e., only six source texts). Although students could cite information from the same 

source multiple times, the relatively low number of sources may account for their lower use of 

reporting verbs. Furthermore, these essays were written under exam conditions, so time pressure 

may have reduced the frequency of reporting verb use.   

 

Table 4 

 

Reporting Verb Frequency across Semantic Categories 

 

Categories  Argumentative Cause-and-effect 

  Raw Count Normed Raw Count  Normed 

Total verbs  2907 908.43 1850 822.41 

Argue  1423 451.82 898 399.21 

Think 756 240.21 447 198.71 

Show  594 173.82 377 167.59 

Find  134 42.58 128 56.90 

 

As for the distribution of the 34 reporting verbs across the four semantic categories, 

argue verbs occurred most frequently in both argumentative and cause-and-effect corpora, 

followed by think, show, and find verbs. Drawing on the normed frequency counts, 

argumentative essays elicited more reporting verbs across the semantic categories of argue, 

think, and show (Table 4).  

 

Turning to the most frequent reporting verbs in the corpora, the ten most frequent 

reporting verbs displayed in Table 5 accounted for more than 68% of all the reporting verbs in 

each corpus. Four reporting verbs think, argue, say, and feel made the top ten list in both corpora, 

which indicates a strong reliance on a limited range of reporting verbs regardless of the essay 

type. In addition, certain reporting verbs are more common in conversation than in academic 

writing (e.g., Biber & Reppen, 1998; Kwon et. al., 2018, Staples & Reppen, 2016). This use of 

conversational reporting verbs is the case in both essay types (think, say, mean in argumentative 

writing and say, think in cause-and-effect) with the most frequent verb in both argumentative 

writing (think) and cause-and-effect (say) being more common in conversation than in academic 

writing. However, we note here that students wrote cause-and-effect essays as part of their 

midterm and then wrote argumentative essays for their final exams. The increase of the use of 

reporting verbs between cause-and-effect and argumentative essays may be related to task 

requirements or may also be related to increased writing experience throughout the class. 

 

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Regarding the semantic categories, argue verbs were most frequent and had an equal 

distribution in argumentative and cause-and-effect essays. Notably, none of the five find verbs 

(realize, establish, recognize, discover, find out) were among the most frequent ten verbs used in 

the entire corpus. Two think verbs (i.e., think and feel) made the ten most frequent reporting 

verbs in each text type. 

 

Table 5 

 

The 10 Most Frequent Reporting Verbs  

 

Semantic 

category 

Reporting verb lemma Argumentative Cause-and-effect 

               Raw Percentage Raw Percentage 

 

 

Argue verbs  

 

Argue 255 8.8% 153 8.3 % 

Say 234 8.0 % 183 9.9 % 

Claim 127 4.4 % ---  

State 125 4.3 % ---  

Mention 114 3.9 % ---  

Admit ---  130 7.0 % 

Accept ---  125 6.8 % 

Add ---  83 4.5 % 

Show Show 316 10.8 % ---  

Mean 153 5.3 % ---  

Demonstrate ---  118 6.4 % 

Reveal ---  93 5.0 % 

Think Think 348 11.9 % 102 5.5 % 

Feel 101 3.5 % 138 7.5 % 

Know 217 7.4 % --- --- 

Hold --- --- 133 7.2 % 

Total  1990 68.3 % 1258 68.1% 

*--- not on the top 10 list 

 

As seen in Figure 1, the distribution of these semantic types of reporting verbs illustrates 

some interesting differences from Kwon et al. (2018), who found fewer argue verbs and more 

find verbs in undergraduate L2 writers’ literature review assignments. For our writers, both 

argumentative and cause-and-effect essays required them to present their own subjective 

viewpoints in ways that differ from literature review assignment where the writer’s subjective 

opinions are not as highly valued as synthesizing source materials. In addition, when composing 

literature review assignments, students typically depend on empirical studies as their source 

materials, and they provide a summary of what the researchers found. Our students, on the other 

hand, used commentaries and news reports that synthesized information from research studies as 

their sources, which perhaps accounts for the lower rates of find verbs in the corpora.  

 

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Figure 1. Semantic types of reporting verbs compared with literature review writing from Kwon, 

et. al., (2018) (by percentage). 

 

Similar to previous research with undergraduate disciplinary writing (Charles, 2006; 

Friginal, 2013) argue verbs had the highest frequency rate in both essay types representing over 

48% of all reporting verbs. More frequent use of argue verbs by our students indicate that EAP 

writing tasks, regardless of essay type, elicit similar reporting structures to academic writing. 

However, there were some differences in the specific verbs used in the argue category. Whereas 

claim, state, and mention made the top-ten of argumentative essays, they were replaced by admit, 

accept, and add in cause-and-effect essays. This variation could be associated with the 

differences in topics, prompts or source materials assigned to them for their midterm and final 

examinations.   

 

 Turning to the next most frequent semantic category, think verbs occurred more often in 

these essays (around 25% of all reporting verbs in each text type) than in prior disciplinary 

writing studies (Charles, 2006; Friginal, 2013). Since think verbs are associated with more 

informal or spoken settings (Biber et al., 1999; Hinkel, 2003; Staples & Reppen, 2016), expert 

writers might avoid using them when composing academic texts. For example, undergraduate 

students in Friginal’s (2013) study used think verbs infrequently (3%) in their research reports. 

EAP students in the current study, on the other hand, often reflected their viewpoints about the 

topic assigned to them using think verbs and without citing a specific source. This use of think 

verbs might have helped them develop their arguments through general attributions (i.e., general 

information or position without corroboration) to be supported with evidence later in the essay. 

According to Charles (2006), writers present a claim to be supported or refuted and hide their 

actual stance when they use general attributions. Excerpts (1–2) below illustrate this pattern 

where the students choose the verb think to report opinions of others about the topic using 

uncited generalizations.   

48.98 48.5
38.08

26.02 24.16

24.35

20.45 20.38

18.32

4.54 6.92

19.24

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Argumentative Cause and Effect Kwon et. al., 2018

Argue Think Show Find

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1. Argumentative essay: Although some proponents think that microcredit that provides 

some money to create jobs can reduce the poverty, no one can deny that microcredit 

might also cause the loan sharking.  

2. Cause-and-effect essay: Many people think modern technology is helpful for food 

supply, but the truth is it hurting food supply much more.  

 

As for show verbs, the overall frequency was similar in each corpus, representing 20% of 

all reporting verbs. Two reporting verbs show and mean accounted for almost 16% of all 

reporting verbs in the argumentative essay type. Interestingly, neither of these reporting verbs 

was among the most frequent ten reporting verbs in cause-and-effect essays. Previously, Kwon et 

al. (2018) reported that show accounted for 8% of all reporting verbs in undergraduate students’ 

literature review assignments., In Swales’s (2014) research, show was one of the two most 

frequently used reporting verbs in the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers 

(MICUSP). L2 writers in the current study were able to reflect the same pattern in terms of using 

show most frequently while writing argumentative essays. In cause-and-effect essays, they used 

the reporting verb demonstrate more frequently than show as illustrated in the excerpts (3–4) 

below.   

 

3. Argumentative essay: As Seery's research shows, 20% of the poor families, which send 

their children to private schools, that costs 127% income of these families.  

4. Cause-and-effect essay: Petrini (2005) demonstrated, in the past 20 years, more than 

twice as many chemical fertilizers have been used in food process.  

 

Find verbs represented the least frequent semantic category in both the argumentative 

(4.6%) and cause-and-effect corpus (6.9%) of our students and none of these verbs made the ten 

most frequent verbs used in the entire corpus. Conversely, find verbs represented a higher 

frequency in previous studies. For example, in Friginal’s (2013) research, find verbs accounted 

for 27% of all reporting verbs in research reports. This discrepancy is likely because the source 

materials assigned to our students were not scholarly articles but commentaries and news reports 

that synthesized information from research studies, presenting opposing views and/or 

emphasizing a certain opinion. Indeed, the students were successful in evaluating the source 

content as shown in the excerpt (5) below where, the student was able to evaluate that Jowit 

(2008) was not the primary source and cited the information using an argue verb rather than a 

found verb.  

 

5. The original text: “The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more 

resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, 

degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other 

species” (Jowit, 2008).  

 

The student’s citation: Jowit (2008) reported from the Living Planet that humans are 

using more natural resources than those available in the living planet (Argumentative text 

type).  

  

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Pedagogical Implications 

 

The results of this study show that EAP students depended on a limited number of reporting 

verbs in both types of source-based essays. Similar to disciplinary writing, argue verbs 

represented the most frequent semantic category whereas find verbs occurred infrequently. These 

results could be interpreted in the light of pedagogical issues surrounding the use of reporting 

structures in EAP essay types. As reported in previous research, using a wider range of reporting 

verbs would be indicative of students’ ability to critically examine arguments in sources (Biber 

& Reppen, 1998; Hinkel, 2003). Overall use of reporting verbs for these EAP learners (around 

five reporting verbs per essay) seems to be much lower than disciplinary writing (e.g., Kwon et 

al., 2018). Thus, an important question to ask is whether the essays commonly targeted in EAP 

courses help students get ready for their academic subject courses. To prepare students for 

disciplinary courses, the pedagogical materials used in EAP courses should teach them how to 

read and evaluate academic texts and produce text-responsible writing that reflects their stance 

(Hyland & Shaw, 2016). Since these EAP students depended on a restricted set of reporting 

verbs to incorporate source information in their texts, writing instruction should include a focus 

on reporting verbs with different functions. Using corpus-informed materials has been shown to 

help students use a wider range of reporting verbs (Bloch, 2009; Friginal, 2013) and develop 

awareness of reporting verbs in academic writing (Shin et al., 2018). In addition, although 

textbooks and course-based materials encourage students to fully develop their arguments using 

sources, EAP students would further benefit from strategy training emphasizing the role of 

reporting verbs in source integration. This instruction could be done focusing on individual 

aspects of academic writing (e.g., purpose of source use, development of authorial voice) and 

introducing discourse tools (e.g., cohesive devices) that are elicited by different essay types 

(Freddi, 2005; Hyland, 2002). 

 

 The most commonly used reporting verbs in our corpora were associated with 

conversation rather than academic writing, which suggests that students were using 

developmental strategies when attributing information to sources in their texts. As part of an 

EAP curriculum, moving beyond the essayist tradition and introducing L2 students to authentic 

academic genres with rhetorical conventions would help them move progressively from spoken 

discourse to written language. Encouraging students to produce writing similar to literature 

reviews, an authentic academic genre across academic disciplines, might be considered as an 

additional curricular objective. In addition, having exposure to primary research as opposed to 

secondary sources will contribute to students’ academic writing skills in terms of creating 

opportunities for research synthesis using more find verbs.   

 

Limitations 

 

Although our findings have implications for EAP courses, the results should be interpreted 

cautiously. Because the midterm and final examinations were administered in an existing EAP 

course, all students wrote cause-and-effect essays four weeks before the argumentative essays. 

There was no control group to counterbalance the order of tests. Thus, replication studies are 

needed to confirm that it is the essay type, not development, that accounts for the differences. 

Furthermore, our study compared EAP essay types in terms of the distribution of reporting verbs 

across semantic categories. Although the results provide insights into the frequency of reporting 

https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.388


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BC TEAL Journal Volume 6 Number 1 (2021): 42–58 

https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.388 

verb use across essay types, we did not explore the rhetorical functions of those verbs. Previous 

studies have shown that students in disciplinary courses use reporting verbs to achieve a variety 

of functions such as self-reference and uncited generalizations (Kwon et al., 2018; Shin et al., 

2018). Future studies that focus on EAP writing should extend research into rhetorical functions 

of reporting structures in different essay types.  

 

Conclusion 

 

This study explored L2 writers’ reporting verb choices across two different essay types to 

examine whether EAP writing elicits similar reporting structures to academic writing. Drawing 

on corpus-based analysis, we found that EAP students relied on a limited number of reporting 

verbs regardless of essay type. We also found that, in contrast to more advanced academic 

writers’ texts, find verbs occurred infrequently while argue verbs were most frequent in L2 

writing. Because generic essay types, such as argumentative and cause-and-effect, are commonly 

targeted in EAP curriculum and assessment, our findings are useful for understanding how L2 

students refer to source information when composing timed essays. Our future research aims to 

investigate EAP writers’ engagement with primary sources while composing untimed classroom 

genres to examine how they introduce, evaluate, and position themselves in relation to the 

information presented in source materials.  

 

Funding Statement 

 

Funding for this study was provided by a Mitacs Globalink grant awarded to the first author.  

 

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Appendix A 

 

Topics by Essay Type 

 

Argumentative (N = 551) Cause-and-effect (N = 476) 

Government (n = 100) 

Advertising (n = 84) 

Microcredit (n = 75) 

Poverty (n = 68)  

Inequality (n = 60) 

Wealth (n = 58) 

Organizations (n = 39) 

Resources (n = 35) 

Charity (n = 26)  

Marketing (n = 3) 

Food (n = 3) 

Food and drink (n = 101) 

Ecosystem (n = 54) 

Wildlife (n = 44) 

Consumerism (n = 43) 

Population (n = 43) 

Modern diet (n = 37) 

Marketing (n = 36) 

Environment (n = 36) 

Agriculture (n = 31) 

Industrial farming (n = 21) 

Water supply (n = 19) 

Technology (n = 11) 

 

  

https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.388
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2016.02.002
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.003
https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088313515166
https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/12.4.365
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2010.06.002
https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.296
https://doi.org/10.1177/003368829202300105


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Appendix B 

 

The List of 53 Reporting Verbs and Frequency Counts in Each Essay Type 

 

Semantic 

Category Lemma 

Argumentative Cause-and-effect 

Raw Normed Raw Normed 

 

Argue Category  

(n = 32) 

Argue 255 81.0 23 9.4 

Suggest 37 11.8 15 6.1 

Assert 5 1.6 5 2.0 

Predict 11 3.5 36 14.7 

Write 38 12.1 49 20.0 

Explain 53 16.8 42 17.1 

Conclude 85 27.0 54 22.0 

Mention 114 36.2 93 38.0 

Admit 48 15.3 3 1.2 

Observe 16 5.1 17 6.9 

Accept 47 14.9 19 7.8 

Imply 8 2.5 0 0.0 

Add 42 13.3 118 48.2 

Complain 7 2.2 5 2.0 

Hypothesize 1 0.3 0 0.0 

Insist 6 1.9 3 1.2 

Propose 9 2.9 2 0.8 

Remark 1 0.3 6 2.4 

Reply 2 0.6 0 0.0 

Speculate 0 0.0 0 0.0 

Stress 0 0.0 0 0.0 

Contend 4 1.3 0 0.0 

Report 13 4.1 15 6.1 

Postulate 0 0.0 0 0.0 

Posit 0 0.0 0 0.0 

Claim  127 40.4 39 15.9 

Point out 68 21.6 83 33.9 

Maintain 72 22.9 23 9.4 

Say 234 74.3 125 51.0 

State 125 39.7 130 53.1 

Talk about 13 4.1 14 5.7 

Acknowledge 25 7.9 0 0.0 

Show Category  

(n = 7) 

Demonstrate 30 9.5 12 4.9 

Illustrate 25 7.9 37 15.1 

Indicate 50 15.9 37 15.1 

Confirm 6 1.9 2 0.8 

Reveal 20 6.4 20 8.2 

Mean 153 48.6 133 54.3 

Show 316 100.4 138 56.3 

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Find Category  

(n = 8) 

Realize 50 15.9 53 21.6 

Find out 13 4.1 11 4.5 

Discover  5 1.6 24 9.8 

Establish  43 13.7 26 10.6 

Infer  0 0.0 1 0.4 

Recognize 23 7.3 13 5.3 

note 10 3.2 10 4.1 

Identify 13 4.1 6 2.4 

Think Category  

(n = 6)  

Know 217 68.9 183 74.7 

Assume 10 3.2 7 2.9 

Think 348 110.6 153 62.5 

Hold 90 28.6 9 3.7 

Feel 101 32.1 102 41.6 

Hope 11 3.5 12 4.9 

 

 

 

 
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