APPRAISAL analysis of reflections 741
dents felt comfortable with explicit expression of emotion. Another factor is the relative shortness of the reflections (mean length 185 words), so that evoked meanings cannot easily have been cued by explicit lexis earlier in the text.
4. APPRAISAL resources used by four groups: quantitative and
742 James Mackay and Jean Parkinson
own actions and behavior. AFFECT and JUDGMENT are thus useful in gain- ing insight into students' own feelings and what they felt about their behavior.
4.2. AFFECT
In this analysis we found that fear and disquiet are related, fear being the anticipation, and disquiet the present experience of insecurity while doing an activity. Interest and cheer are also hard to distinguish in this analysis.
Students speak of enjoying the task, which at first was tempting to code as happiness. However, in the context of completing an academic project, satisfaction seemed more appropriate, and statements like "I enjoyed constructing the house" were coded as satisfaction (interest) rather than happiness (cheer). The following kinds of expressions were coded by us as falling into each category:
Happiness (cheer) Satisfaction (interest)
Fun, happy, couldn't believe it, glad, Interesting, involved, enjoy excited, feel better, didn't hate it, thrilling,
looked forward, reward. fascinated
It is clear from Table 2 that female students were more likely than male students to use AFFECT. Prominent categories (highlighted in Table 2) were disinclination (fear), insecurity ( disquiet), happiness ( cheer), satisfaction
(admiration), and satisfaction (interest), with only the last of these ex-
pressed very much by male students. This indicates that female students represent themselves as experiencing more positive and negative emotions
as a result of the project, than male students do.
Female students were just as likely to express satisfaction (interest), but far more likely to express happiness (cheer) and satisfaction (admiration) with their own performance, indicating perhaps that female students ex- perienced successful completion of the task as more of an accomplish- ment than did male students. Female students also were more likely to ex- press negative emotions (fear and disquiet: both present and anticipated
insecurity while making and wiring the house). It is clear from this that
female students experienced anxiety jn building and wiring the house, a
finding we relate to lower initial expectation in the female students that
they would be able to achieve the task because the woodwork and in par- ticular the wiring associated with the assignment are not tasks that they expect women to be able to do. Explicit statements include: "Technology
Table 2. AFFECT: comparison by gender and educational dis/advantage (after Martin 2000: 150-151)
24 ':j? 20 ':j? 25 d' 18 d' Tot Example
disad advan disad advan 87
_ _ -misery 2 4 l l 8 "Loolcing back on the project that
w1happiness --- started off in tears"
antipathy 0 3 I 0 4 "I hate electricity"
- - - cheer 10 11 3 3 27 "its thrilling lo be able lo light up a
/I__
happ;ne,s -.._____ light bulb"affection I 2 3 0 6 "because I love design"
AFFECT . . - -disquiet 19 9 3 0 31 "First I battle to build up a house"
~ msecunty .
0 I 0 0 I "much to his surprise"
/ (pres,nl ~ - -su,pns,
ovon~)
~
- - - confidence 2 5 2 3 12 "the harder T worked the more ::i:,.,AFFECT security - - - - confident I felt about my house" "1l "1l
trust 0 0 0 0 0 ~
. . . ennui 0 0 2 0 2 "you end up losing interest" c;,
d1ssat1sfact1on ::::::::: displeasure
:i..
3 I 1 I 6 "l get cross because I didn't finish my t'°"
s::i
project" ;::s i::i
---interest 11 14 15 15 55 "1 truly enjoyed the making of the ~ c..,
satisfaction - - - - - house" c:;·
admiration 14 13 5 3 35 "J did the wiring by myself which I ~
am very proud of" ~ "'(
AFFECT (future ..._________ disinclination - -inclination - -fear desire 17 4 17 4 0 4 4 42 8 ""because I had a phobia" hopefully a littJe girl will get pleasure ('1) (") Cl
- -
;::s-
events) playing it as I did building it" c..,
Total 83 80 40 34 237 -.J
+'"
w
744
James Mackay and Jean ParkinsonTable 3. JUDGMENT in the reflections
Positive Who is judged, +- Negative Who is
and by whom? judged?
Social esreem
normality 2 0
''lucky I have a science background"
capacity 35 student judges 74 student
"I feel like someone self, boys, "I could not judges
who knows other students, grasp what self
about electricity the lecturer we had to
from now on" do"
tenacity 24 student judges 2 4 student
"But I struggled self "I was so judges
and struggled negative. I self
until it get done" told myself
that I can't do this"
Social sanction
veracity 0 0
propriety 17 Student judges
"He has patience to the lecturer "I thought it
give guidance" was unfair"
is likely passed by boys as they are strong and thoughtful" and "I was
surprised that I could do it being a girl".
4.3. JUDGMENT
There were 159 uses of JUDGMENT in the data. In a small number of cases, students assess the lecturer as kind and patient because he helped them.
Far more frequently, students' judgments are of their own behavior.
They judge themselves to be capable or, more frequently, not capable;
they judge themselves to be persevering, often structuring their reflection as eventual triumph after repeated struggles.
Table 3 shows that most frequently it is the student who judges
him/
herself. A negative appraisal of capacity, a feeling of being unable to do the task, was a prominent category. As we discuss below relating to AP- PRECIATION, we did not analyze as APPRAlSAL bald statements such as "it was a hard task". However, when students chose explicitly to attach the experience of ease/difficulty to themselves (e.g., "I found it extremely dif-
APPRAISAL analysis of reflections 745
Table 4. JUDGMENT: analysis by gender and educational advantage
Positive Negative Total
24 Q 20 ~ 25 d' 18 d' 24 ~ 20 ~ 25 d' 18 d'
disad advan disad advan disad advan disad advan Social esteem
nonnality 2 2
capacity 6 9 18 2 31 26 9 8 109
tenacity 12 5 5 2 3 27
Social sanction
propriety 6 3 7 I I 18
Total 24 19 29 5 34 27 9 9 156
ficult to understand circuits"), we viewed this as a judgment on them- selves and this is analyzed in our data as CAPACITY. Analyzing the data by gender and educational dis/advantage yields further interesting results shown in Table 4.
A first interesting feature of our analysis of JUDGMENT shows that a positive appraisal of their own CAPACITY is the most frequent use of JUDG- MENT by disadvantaged male students. Female students in both groups appraise their CAPACITY negatively. CAPACITY assesses whether a person is competent or capable (Coffin 2000: 275) and in our data was typica1ly instanced in expressions such as "but it challenging me a lot to get elec- tricity to work" and "Even after I was showed the basic steps I was still hopelessly lost". A second noticeable feature is a tendency of education- ally disadvantaged female students to positively appraise themselves for TENACITY. TENACITY is a person's dependability or resolve and in our data was typica11y instanced in expressions such as "but then when I was faced with the challenge I had to stand up for myself and do it". Finally, educationally disadvantaged students of both genders were more likely to appraise positively the lecturer's willingness to assist them (PROPRIETY) in statements such as "The lecturer have been kind enough to assist me wherever I encountered the problems".
4.4. APPRECIATION
For Martin (2003: 173; original emphasis), APPRECIATION
construes attitudes about texts, performances and natural phenomena, and fits into frames such as I consider it 'x': I consider it innovative/unimaginative
746 James Mackay and Jean Parkinson
Table 5. APPRECIATION in the data
Positive Student assesses Negative Student
assesses
Reaction: 36 Course,
impact "an awesome assignment "All the years
module" electricity had
been very boring for me"
Reaction: 29 Project, designing, 5
quality "It is extremely making, wiring "the most irritating
fun" the house task ever"
Composition: 8 course 8
balance "The module was "it did not go as
well structured" planned"
Composition: 10 wiring, circuit 28 Assignment,
complexity "Doing wiring "I can say with wiring,
really gave me definite certainty circuit
no sweat" that this was one
frustrating task"
Valuation 37 Module, project 2
"This kind of "What is not really
project is very good about it is
useful to us" I spent a lot of
time" •
In this analysis we look upon the doII house as being in the nature of an artwork/artifact. The APPRAISAL system (Hunston and Thompson 2000:
142) expresses writer opinion on the good/bad parameter. In the context of student reflections on this task, the easy/ difficult distinction was salient in the data. Students assessed "difficult" as bad and "easy" as good. This is clear in Table 5, where complexity is a prominent negative category.
The emotional/interpersonal content of whether the task is easy or diffi- cult is clear in statements such as "The wiring was a mission at first", "I must say that this was one of the hardest and most challenging assign- ments I've ever bad to do", "I honestly found making the doll's house pretty easy". However, the emotional/interpersonal content in "It was easy making the house", and "It was also difficult to solder together" is less clear, although it could be regarded as evoked APPRECIATION in this context where almost all students regarded ease/difficulty as important enough to mention in their reaction to the task. Nevertheless, as students chose factual expression for expressions of ease/difficulty in cases such as
"It was easy /difficult making the house", we regarded such statements as
APPRAISAL analysis of reflections 747
Table 6. APPRECIATION: analysis by gender and educational advantage
Positive Negative TotaJ
24 ~ 20 ~ 25 d' 18 d' 24 ~ 20 ~ 25 d' 18 o' disad advan disad advan disad advan disad advan
Reaction: impact 6 7 8 14 I 36
Reaction: quality 3 6 5 14 2 2 33
Com position: 2 5 6 16
balance
Composition: 4 4 3 2 13 9 4 39
complexity
Valuation 4 6 16 10 38
18 25 34 41 5 23 J l 5 162
factual, and not as examples of APPRECIATION. We counted 169 instances of appreciation in the data.
Figure 6 indicates that students appraised the course, assignment, and various aspects of their own doll house such as the building and the wir- ing. The most negatively appraised aspect of the project was the electric- ity /circuit/wiring of the doll's house. It was said to be "tricky", "exasper- ating", "a mission", and by contrast, "rewarding", and "extremely fun".
Table 6 indicates that APPRECIATION was a favored resource for male students, and for this group was most likely to be positive.
5. Discussion: the APPRAISAL resources used by the four groups