IntroductionIn previous studies, the SPICLE 1 writing research team at the University of Madrid studied various major factors influencing L2 writing ( Neff, et al. 1994( Neff, et al. , 2002. The results of these studies show that two influential factors in the construction of texts are language proficiency in L2 (including knowledge of the linguistic code and the rhetorical conventions of the L2) and transfer factors from L1 (including transfer of the linguistic code and rhetorical/literacy skills). A cross-sectional study of university EFL texts written by 1 st and 4 th year English Philology students, from the MAD Corpus (Neff, Dafouz, Díez and Prieto 1992), revealed that, as students become more proficient, they eliminate language errors but still experience major problems in constructing texts, such as formulating writer stance, choosing adequate information structure techniques and over-under-or mis-using metadiscourse connectors.This paper, part of the on-going research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, presents a comparison of the devices used to construct writer stance in argumentative texts written by advanced EFL students (Belgian-French speaking, Dutch, Italian and Peninsular-Spanish EFL writers, from the ICLE corpus), with those used by native speakers. The main aim of the present study is the analysis of the EFL students' use of the rhetorical conventions of the L2 discourse community as compared to the reference groups, American university students (from the Locness corpus, Louvain) and professional newspaper writers (from the ESCC, Madrid

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