An Investigation of the Effect of Audience Awareness-raising on EFL Learners’ Use of Interpersonal Resources in Essay Writing

Abstract

Due to the crucial role of utilizing interpersonal resources in facilitating the process of written communication and establishment of intimate social relations between writers and readers, the present study was designed to explore the effect of audience awareness-raising on EFL learners’ use of interpersonal resources in essay writing. For this purpose, 20 EFL learners studying at Maravia Institute in Maragheh (placed at upper-intermediate levels of English language proficiency) were chosen on the basis of their performance in an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) to participate in the experiment. The participants were randomly divided into two groups of experimental and control. Both groups received instruction on writing for seven sessions. The given instruction was the same for each group: seven modes of development in essay writing were taught (Narration, Description, Example, Classification & Division, Compare & Contrast, Process, and Cause & Effect). Metadiscourse markers were also taught implicitly in the examples of each mode. The audience awareness was highlighted in the writing assignments of the experimental group by specifying a specific audience for each topic provided, while in the control group this awareness-raising was missing. Following Hyland's (2005) typology of metadiscourse, the collected data were analyzed on the basis of each groups’ use of metadiscourse markers. The findings revealed that the frequency of metadiscourse resources was different in two groups. This indicates that raising audience awareness was influential in metadiscourse use of EFL learners.