Understanding the meaning-making in academic writing, especially in a research article produced by EFL graduate students, is essential. The concept of meaning-making is applied to investigate how language learners are able to deploy linguistic capital to produce meanings. Through meaning-making, students are able to communicate their cultural backgrounds and life experiences in their writing. This study attempted to inquire into three aspects of students' meaning-making processes in research articles: (1) how graduate students deploy the experiential meaning as meaning-making of introduction in research articles; (2) the rhetorical structures of introduction in research articles; and (3) the factors affecting the students to use that meaning-making.
In this study, the content analysis served as the research design. With certain tabulated figures and percentages of experiential meaning components serving as support, the descriptive analysis takes the main feature. The primary data source for this study is the written work of graduate students at a State University in Surabaya; secondary information comes from interviews with these students. Students' research articles were either good, average, or poor. The experiential meanings were examined through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The CARS model was also used to analyze the rhetorical structures of the research articles.
This study's findings highlighted three points: firstly, the meaning-making choices communicated by the experience meanings of three categories of research articles produced somewhat varied outcomes. Material, relational, and mental processes are used most often in categories of good research articles. In average and poor research articles, material, relational, and existential considerations predominate. The use of circumstances also varies throughout the three categories of research articles. In the good and average research articles, the enhancing function is often seen most frequently in clauses. In poor research articles, however, the elaborating function predominates. Also, the findings revealed that distinct research article categories used several subtypes of process. Second, the introduction sections of the three types of research articles vary in their rhetorical structure. Practically, almost good research articles linearly adhere to the CARS (Create-a-Research-Space) model, although in varying moves and with some steps omitted. The rhetorical structure of average research articles is not as linear as that of good research articles. In fact, poor research articles lack adequate rhetorical organization. Thirdly, the students' meaning-making was influenced by their psychological, social-cultural, and linguistic backgrounds.
In summary, there are subtle but noticeable differences in the meaning-making of different types of research articles in terms of the components of experiential meaning and rhetorical structure. Besides, a few aspects are a little bit different, such as the variety of meaning types that occur throughout the mental process, the verbal process, and the relational process. In addition, the factors that are taken into account to influence the meaning of all types of research articles vary.