This article reports on a pedagogical trial of teaching reporting verbs for source integration in a North American ESL (English as a second language) composition class. Source incorporation challenges many novice ESL writers in the academic context as they are unable to view writing as an interactional activity, which requires proper presentation of different sources. This problem is often manifested in their monotonous, ineffective choice of reporting verbs. Advancing Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (1978, 1994), Martin and White's Appraisal Theory (2005) further studies Interpersonal metafunction by focusing on speaker/writer attitude/evaluation in language use. It serves as the theoretical framework in this pedagogical trial which then helps student writers understand how reporting verbs could indicate different stances and create interactions in writing. This two-week pedagogical trial followed the teaching cycle of modelling, joint construction and independent construction recommended in the genre approach to help students to better deploy reporting verbs. Their writing samples before and after this pedagogical trial were collected, together with a final survey of their perceptions of the teaching activities, as evidence for the (in)efficiency of this pedagogical trial. Analysis of students' original and revised writings revealed progress but some lingering problems in their reporting verbs. Survey data indicated their enhanced understanding of why and how to integrate sources via reporting verbs, and their positive reactions to the teaching activities. Finally, the implications of this pedagogical intervention are discussed in the academic context for writing.