Development and validation of the questionnaire on EFL students’ perceptions of authorial stance in academic writing

Studies on academic writing of EFL students have found that they have been less successful in presenting an effective stance. It has been assumed that how they perceive authorial stance may influence their stance deployment. Yet few studies have been conducted to assess student writers’ perceptions of stance. To fill the gap, this research intends to develop and validate an instrument, the Perceptions of Authorial Stance Questionnaire (PASQ), for assessing EFL students’ perceptions of authorial stance and further exploring their relationships with stance deployment and the overall quality of English academic writing. Taking a dialogic perspective, we designed the research with two studies in it. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis with 197 respondents and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis with another sample of 191 respondents produced results of a 17 item scale with two-factors: dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion. In Study 2, scores for the two subscales of the PASQ were examined in relation to the frequencies of various stance types and writing scores. Results show that scores for the two subscales of perceptions were positively correlated with the frequencies of different stance types. However, no significant relationship was detected between students’ perceptions and their writing scores. Possible reasons of the findings and their pedagogical implications are discussed.