Teaching Multimodal Metadiscourse in English for Academic Purposes

Abstract

On the one hand, metadiscourse consists of discourse markers that do not add propositional content to discourse. On the other, multimodality is based on a functional analysis of language and includes all semiotic systems and resources. The two fields of knowledge make up multimodal metadiscourse. As both text and images are useful to guide readers in English for academic purposes (EAP), I included them in this analysis on multimodal metadiscourse performed for teaching purposes. The main objectives of this paper are, first, to identify the textual and visual metadiscourse devices used by EAP learners enrolled in an engineering degree and by engineers in research papers. The second is to compare the frequencies of the multimodal metadiscourse devices used by engineering learners and researchers in order to propose some hints that may be useful for EAP teachers. To this end, I compiled and analysed two corpora: one made up of research papers and the other consisting of material written by English learners, both on engineering. The results showed the features of multimodal metadiscourse still to be acquired by EAP learners. After that, some tips were suggested for the design of activities taking into account the results and examples extracted from the analysis of the two corpora. Finally, conclusions were drawn on the most frequent multimodal metadiscourse devices used and their possible use in teaching EAP.