Appraisal Framework in Analyzing Learners’ Attitudinal Resources on Performing Of Mice and Men

This paper is carried out to find out the attitudinal resources used by students in Play Performance class through appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005). It focuses on how the students negotiate attitudes to express their feelings, judgements, and appreciation of “Of Mice and Men” production process. The data for this qualitative study were collected from students’ reflections which were selected purposely from different production and artistic divisions. It analyses 109 expressions based on three domains of attitudinal resources in the appraisal theory. The most frequently used resources are affect resources that serve to express students’ positive or negative feelings. The findings show that although students experience a certain degree of insecurity [-security], they reveal positive inclination [+inclination] towards the production process. The judgement and appreciation resources are used to evaluate the behavior and learning processes. The discussion demonstrates that this systemic functional linguistic framework works as a solid basis to analyze students’ reflections. This study implies that the appraisal framework can be one of the considerations in evaluating learners’ performance.


INTRODUCTION
Reflections are an integral part of learning, including learning a foreign language. Reflections in the classroom context are written verbally to describe one"s learning experience (Burton, Quirke, Reichmann, & Peyton, 2009;Kuswandono, 2012;Salmon, 2016;Stevens, 2015). Salmon (2016) argued that with reflections, play can promote deep understanding. The choice of linguistic devices in students" reflections does not only unify the text together, but it also shows how the writers engage with the experience, the texts, and the readers. The text is not only a line of words compiled as reading materials, but it is also a means to convey the writers" voice. Studying learners" voices is crucial in an academic setting to obtain in-depth insights on their needs and problems.
Play Performance, offered for the 5th and 6th semester English Language Education students, takes a holistic approach in language learning. Stevens (2015) mentions that play with reflections promotes active learning. Furthermore, a whole person education is implemented in the course not only to perform English drama, but also to gain the 21st century skills. Writing reflections is an integral part of this course. When preparing the performance, the students planned, executed, and monitor their progress through reflections, which are loaded with their critical voices, which leads to a better understanding of their attitudes.
A great deal of literature has investigated critical voice in literary works, argumentative writings, journal articles, and other genres (Fitriati, Solihah, & Tusino, 2018;Gales, 2011;Lam & Crosthwaite, 2018;Ngo & Unsworth, 2015;Pascual, 2010) through appraisal theory. White (2001( , in Križan, 2016 has stated "that an appraisal is a particular approach to exploring, describing, and explaining the way language is used to evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas, and to manage interpersonal positioning, and relationships." The system of Appraisal has been developed by Jim Martin, Peter White and others within the school of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory. The appraisal itself is regionalized as "three interacting domains: attitude, engagement and graduation" (Martin & White, 2005, p. 35).
A sizable literature has documented the use of this framework in analyzing various discourse (Badklang & Srinon, 2018;Bednarek, 2009;Fitriati et al., 2018;Križan, 2016;Mori, 2017;Ngo & Unsworth, 2015). In spoken discourse, Badklang and Srinon (2018) analyzed classroom talk using this framework. They found that both the teacher and students express all the domains of attitudes, namely judgement, appreciation, and affect. They expressed a more positive attitude in the class. Through the framework, the researchers discuss the classroom relationships between the teacher and the students.
In written discourse, Fitriati, Solihah, and Tusino (2018) found out that EFL learners tend to use affect resources as the dominant domain of attitude in the narrative writings. They tend to convey feelings and emotions of character to engage with the audience. Sizeable research has analyzed the appraisal system in argumentative writing (Jalilifar & Hemmati, 2013;Lam & Crosthwaite, 2018;Liu, 2013;Wu & Allison, 2003;Xinghua & Thompson, 2009;Yang, 2016). Liu (2013) shows that highscored essays have appraisal values to build strong persuasion. The study suggests that studies on EFL writing should also focus on interpersonal perspectives. Lam and Crosthwaite (2018) also analyze argumentative writing by comparing L1 and L2 argumentative essays. The findings suggest that while L1 English writers tend to use more engagement resources, Hong Kong L2 English writers tend to use more negative attitudinal resources, which might be influenced by the topic of the essays. These studies show that the appraisal framework can be a solid theoretical ground to analyze classroom discourse (Ngo & Unsworth, 2015), including reflections.
The studies indicate that the framework is powerful in investigating interpersonal voices through their language choice (Badklang & Srinon, 2018;Fitriati et al., 2018;Jalilifar & Hemmati, 2013;Lam & Crosthwaite, 2018;Liu, 2013;Ngo & Unsworth, 2015;Wu & Allison, 2003;Xinghua & Thompson, 2009;Yang, 2016). However, the application of this theory has not been researched thoroughly in analyzing learners" reflections. Interpersonal components in Play Performance students" reflections are analyzed to find out the writers" voices through scrutinizing their choice of lexical items. Reflections from different divisions of the play production were scrutinized based on the attitudinal resources of the appraisal framework. Through three regions of attitudinal resources, this study analyzes the affect, judgement, and appreciation found in the reflections. Attitude is itself classified into three domains, namely "affect", "judgment" and "appreciation". Affect resources express the reactions of feelings. They reveal the polarity of emotions of happiness, security and satisfaction. Next, Martin and White (Martin & White, 2005) state that judgment deals with assessing behavior to normative principles, which are broken down into normality, capacity, tenacity, veracity, and propriety. Furthermore, they elaborate on appreciation resources dealing with the evaluation of processes within the discourse. It shows how the elements in the process are valued. These resources mark the aesthetic assessments of things, including the learning process in performing Of Mice and Men.

Appraisal theory
Linguistic features in textual discourse have been analysed from different theories (Febiyaska & Ardi, 2019;Fitriati et al., 2018;Indrian & Ardi, 2019;Pasaribu, 2017). One framework to analyse attitudes in texts is the appraisal framework, developed by Martin and White (2005). Figure 1 shows the subcategories of this framework. This theory enables the researcher to analyze lexemes into several subsystems: attitude, engagement and graduation (Badklang & Srinon, 2018;Križan, 2016), whose subsystems can be broken down into other subcategories as seen in figure 1.
Attitude, as suggested by Martin and White (2005), deals with feelings, including emotions, judgments and evaluations. Secondly, engagement is concerned with voices and sources in the discourse. Finally, graduation focuses on gradability (Martin & White, 2005). This study focuses on the attitudinal resources of the students" reflections to explore their feelings and opinions in preparing the play.

Attitudinal resources
Attitudinal resources are the tools employed as the main analysis framework in this study. Sizable research has explored these resources in different discourse (Badklang & Srinon, 2018;Fitriati et al., 2018;Križan, 2016;Xinghua & Thompson, 2009). The use of this domain would enable the researcher to expose the attitudinal lexeme of the students through their reflection.
Attitude deals with emotions as it explicates positive and negative "emotional reactions, judgments of behavior and evaluation of things" (Martin & White,p. 37). Figure 1 also shows that the attitude region is broken down into three domains, namely affect, judgment and appreciation (Martin & White, 2005). Affect deals with linguistic features for negotiating emotional reactions. Judgment resources contain semantic lexemes encoding the assessment of behavior according to various normative principles. Finally, appreciation focuses on the evaluations of processes (Bednarek, 2009;Križan, 2016;Mori, 2017). The attitudinal resources emerge through the choice of different classes of words; their meanings are highly dependent on the context.

Data and Sources of Data
This study employed qualitative-descriptive research in investigating the attitudinal resources using the appraisal framework. Qualitative content analysis was used to explore expressions categorized into three domains of attitude. Within this method, the study explored the attitudinal resources in the appraisal framework to code the data. The main data of this research were 109 expressions containing attitudinal resources from students" reflections on performing Of Mice and Men.

Instruments
The data were collected by purposely selecting students" reflections from different divisions, namely production team, artistic team, and casts. After scrutinizing three reflections consisting of 109 clauses containing attitudinal resources, the researcher used a checklist table, as the instrument, to code the data based on the domains of attitude in the appraisal framework, namely affect, judgement, and appreciation.

Data Analysis Procedures
The researcher coded the data from the students" reflection based on the appraisal framework. The first step was scrutinizing the data and their context. Next, the lexemes found in the expressions were highlighted and coded based on three regions of attitudinal resources. Afterward, the data were classified into three separate tables, namely table of affect resources, judgement resources, and appreciation resources. The data, then, were interpreted through the appraisal framework.

FINDINGS
This section shows the classifications of 109 attitudinal resources found in students" reflections. The section is broken down into three regions of feeling, namely: affect, judgment and appreciation.  Figure 2 presents that the most dominant domain in students" reflections is the affect resources (49%), which is followed by judgement resources (27%) and appreciation resources (24%).

Affect
The first region of attitudinal resources is affect which is concerned with resources for emotions, or positive and negative feelings. It answers the question, "Does the writer feel happy or sad, confident or anxious, interested or bored, desperate or hopeful?" Table: 1 Affect resources Table 1 shows that the most dominant aspect in students" reflection is positive inclination. Although the students have a high positive inclination, the table also presents that students" reflections express students" anxiety in preparing for the performance. The use of affect as a dominant region of attitude demonstrates that the students tend to convey their feeling or emotion on the process of preparing the play.  The example of a positive inclination [+inclination] can be seen through example (1) in Table 2. In this particular domain, the data show that the students often use positive attitudes [+inclination] rather than the negative ones to motivate themselves in preparing the performance. Example (4) shows the students" uneasiness or anxiety in preparing the performance with her newly-met team. She doesn"t want to feel pressured.

Judgement
Judgement is another region of feelings that is scrutinized in this study. Judgment resources in the students" reflections describe the assessment of behavior. As suggested by Martin and White (2005) these sources express admiration, criticism, or praises. The data in table 3 show the evaluation of behaviors in the four domains of judgment resources: normality, capacity, tenacity, veracity, and propriety in students" reflections. The data show that the most dominant aspect of Judgment in students" reflection is positive capacity. The students evaluated their own and their friends" abilities positively. However, the judgement resources also show how students express their doubt in being able to perform their best.
Judgement markers show that students are able to assess their abilities, characters, and behavior by giving a positive talk as seen in example (7) in Table 4, expressing dislikes as seen in example (8), being dependable as seen in example (9), expressing feasibility (example 11) and evaluation of a character in the story (example 12). The reflections show that students can monitor and behavior their behavior, which is crucial in being critical thinkers (T. A. Pasaribu & Iswandari, 2019;Reed, Aguiar, & Seong, 2014). Although Carlson has asked for permission, which Candy approves after getting forced, of course, killing a living being just to fulfill his own satisfaction is a mean thing to do.
Furthermore, the students also express both positive and negative appreciation. This shows the use of evaluations of variables in terms of reaction, composition, and valuation in the students" reflections on the process of preparing the performance. The students intend to let the lecturers know that they want to give a positive impact by performing the best (example 12). They also focus on quality as they assess the story (example13) and their behavior (example14). It shows that the students are able to monitor their progress. The most dominant aspect of the appreciation resources is the negative complexity in composition. Although the students show positive balance as a team (example 15), the students felt the complexity of preparing and performing the play (example 16). The students also show that they know that their action is meaningful for preparing the performance (example 17).

Appreciation
Appreciation involves "evaluations of semiotic and natural phenomena, according to the ways in which they are valued or not in a given field" (Martin & White, 2005, p. 35). It covers reaction, composition, and valuation towards the process of preparing the performance. The appreciation devices found in the text can be seen in Table 5.  Table 5 shows that the most dominant aspect of appreciation resources is complex composition. Most resources in this domain are negative complex composition. It indicates that the students perceived the process of preparing a high-quality performance as a complex process. This class will never going to teach how to work as personal, but as a team.

Negative -Complex
Positive -Negative 16 I also learned that dramatic reading is not an easy thing to do.

Valuation
Positive 17 My vote was very important for the class to progress.
Negative - Table 6 show that the students did not only monitor their behavior, but they also assess the things and processes related to the performance. The data show the expression that the process grabs his interest as he tries to do his best in performing the play (example 12); The use of the diction interesting in example 13 shows that the student like the character she played, although data in Example 14 also suggested that the student was in pressure. Through reflections, the students expressed that although the process is not easy (example 16), they realized that they learned to work in a team (example 15) and were aware of their role in the team.

DISCUSSION
As shown in the findings, the students in Play Performance class express their reflections using the three domains of attitudinal resources. The most dominant resources belong to affect resources which is in line with other research on narratives (Fitriati et al., 2018;Macken-Horarik, 2003). The reflections demonstrate how students were motivated in the process of performing the play as they had the highest inclination in the affect resources. Guthrie andWigfield (2000, in Allen, 2013) highlight that motivation drives behavior. Allen (2013) adds that motivation leads to a positive attitude. Through the reflections, it can be said that the students have a positive inclination, which is needed for the learning process.
The data also suggests that although they were inclined to be involved in the process of performing play performance, the findings also demonstrated that the students had negative polarity in the security domain [-security]. Students might feel anxious because they had to perform and report in English so they experienced foreign language anxiety (Dedeyn, 2011;Pasaribu, 2016). Anxiety can be categorized into two types: facilitative anxiety and debilitating anxiety (Schovel, 1991, as cited in Pasaribu, 2016. When the students experience facilitative anxiety, they may be challenged to tackle the task, while when they experience the later one, they may be hindered to do the tasks. Fortunately, although the students felt anxious and pressured in the preparation process, their anxiety can be a positive trigger to encourage students to increase efforts. Through this framework, both students" positive and negative feelings can be recognized. Through the attitudinal resources found in the students" reflection, it can be seen that the students were able to express their judgement towards their and their friends" behaviors. Students used judgement resources to monitor their capacity, tenacity, and propriety. The ability to monitor self is important in exercising autonomy (Pasaribu, 2020). It includes the ability to monitor one"s behavior in the learning process. As Burton (2009) suggested, reflections promote lifelong learning as learners continue to evaluate learning performance.
Another noteworthy finding from students" use of attitudinal resources is that students use evaluation resources as they express their voices (Badklang & Srinon, 2018;Liu, 2013;Mori, 2017) towards processes. The data portrayed how students enjoyed working as a team in performing the play. As suggested by Pasaribu (2020), the role of gotong royong or mutual assistance is highlighted in the reflections through the use of evaluation resources.
The use of attitudinal resources in the Play Performance reflections demonstrates that written reflections enable students to express their emotional reactions, their assessment of behavior, and the appreciation of processes surrounding the learning process. The framework can offer a solid framework to analyze classroom discourse, including students" opinions and emotions (Mori, 2017;Ngo & Unsworth, 2015). Through the use of this framework, teachers can encode students" positive and negative feelings and explore their critical voice on behaviors and process to promote deep learning

CONCLUSION
All attitudinal resources are used in the reflections of performing a play. The most frequently used resources are affect resources which serve to express students" positive or negative feelings. Both judgement and appreciation resources are used to assess students" behavior and learning processes. The study discusses examples showing that this framework is powerful in helping educators analyze classroom discourse to evaluate learners" performance. However, this study should also be viewed within its limitations. First, the reflections were limited so more studies incorporating more corpus should be conducted. Studies on classroom talk using this framework can also be done to see the power relationship or the paradigms adopted in the classrooms.