Use Of Metadiscourse Markers Research Articles

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

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.

A Cross Cultural Analysis of Textual and Interpersonal Metadiscourse Markers: The Case of Economic Articles in English and Persian Newspapers

This study was an attempt to investigate the functional role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in English and Persian Economic news reports. To this end, 10 news articles, 5 in each language, were randomly selected from the Economic sections of the leading newspapers published in 2013-2014 in Iran and the United States. Based on Kopple’s (1985) taxonomy, the type and frequency of metadiscourse markers used in the texts were analyzed to find out their functions in the text. The findings revealed that the textual markers used by Persian authors were considerably more frequent than those employed by the American writers. Interestingly, unlike the Persian writers, the American authors enlisted a larger number of interpersonal markers, which made their angle of the subject treatment different. It is evident that the differential use of metadiscourse markers by nationally different authors could be attributed to culture-specific norms governing the development and organization of discourse.

Metadiscourse in Indonesian EFL Learners’ Persuasive Texts: A Case Study at English Department, UNISBANK

Writing competence facilitates the students’ success in their study. In order to produce a coherent text, a writer needs to employ sufficient metadiscourse markers. This study attempted to investigate the use of metadiscourse markers in 7 Indonesian EFL learners’ Persuasive writings. The study is descriptive, applying a quantitative method to support a qualitative analysis. The research results reveal that the occurrences of textual marker types in EFL learners’ Persuasive texts are overall closely similar to those at considered as standard proficient writing (extract from BAWE corpus), while those of interpersonal marker types are different from the standard proficient writing . Since the occurrences of interpersonal marker types are different from those at BAWE corpus in terms of hedges, boosters, engagement markers, the teacher needs to give more practice in teaching the interpersonal metadiscourse markers. Metadiscourse analysis can be a strategy to make the students aware of the important role of metadiscourse markers.

Metadiscourse Markers in the Discussion/Conclusion Section of Persian and English Master's Theses

Metadiscourse markers help writers make coherent and reader- friendly texts, thus of considerable importance in academic writing. The main aim of this study was to investigate how interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers are used by Iranian EFL learners. An inquiry was carried out to investigate cross-cultural similarities and differences in the use of metadiscourse markers in the Discussion and Conclusion sections of the master theses of three categories: native English speakers, native Persian speakers, and non-native English speakers. Following Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse taxonomy, a corpus of sixty master theses was investigated to search for metadiscourse markers. The results showed that native English writers used more interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers than native Persian and EFL learners which might stem from the insufficient awareness of EFL learners of the role of the metadiscourse markers, intercultural differences, and the fact that they do not usually receive explicit instruction on these devices in Persian academic context.

The Impact of Explicit Instruction of Metadiscourse Markers on EFL Learners' Writing Performance

The current study is an attempt to investigate the impact of explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers on advanced, intermediate, and elementary EFL learners’ writing performance. The participants of the study were 94 undergraduate students majoring in English Literature at the University of Isfahan. To elicit the relevant data, participants were given a pretest of writing ability to check their initial knowledge and unprompted use of metadiscourse markers. All the three groups were then exposed to explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers for six successive sessions. Finally, a post test measuring their writing ability with metadiscourse markers in focus was administered. The findings indicated generally that explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers significantly improves EFL learners’ writing ability. It was however unpredictably revealed that learners at the intermediate level improved significantly greater than those at the advanced and elementary levels. These findings firstly call practitioners to pay more serious attention to metadiscourse markers in making EFL curricula. Secondly, they ask for the reinforcement of metadiscourse markers through explicit instruction in EFL courses for the improvement of the learners' writing ability.

The cooperative principle in discourse communities and genres: A framework for the use of metadiscourse

Developments in characterizing discourse communities and their various genres are hoped to provide more insight into the nature of language in use. Such characterizations gradually tend to include the rhetorical and less visible aspects of different genres in different discourse communities. The trend seems rewarding due to the multilingual membership in discourse communities and inevitability of interference from speech communities. Although several studies have tried to describe the distribution and nature of metadiscourse marking across disciplines and languages, no systematic attempt was made, to our knowledge, to introduce a practical model that presumably guides the users in the real time of writing. By analyzing metadiscourse samples from the genre of research article of academic discourse community, this study embarks on introducing a tentative model based on Gricean cooperative principle (CP) that is hoped to help the multilingual members of academic discourse community in the use of metadiscourse markers. The Gricean categories of CP, developed here, are hoped to provide a practical framework that informs how to use rather than how is it used of metadiscourse in writing research articles. Such a model can be assumed an improvement against coarse-grained holistic guides for the use of metadiscourse offered by previous studies. The attempt also led to a new classification of metadiscourse and added two new metadiscourse strategies of collapsers and disclaimers.

THE USE OF METADISCOURSE MARKERS IN ESSAYS WRITTEN BY ESP UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The study deals with metadiscourse markers employed in the essays written by ESP university students of mechanical engineering. The aim was to investigate the frequency of use of metadiscourse markers and to determine their types according to Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy. The corpus consisted of 100 essays dealing with two topics related to mechanical engineering. The research findings indicate that students used interactional metadiscourse categories to a significantly higher extent than interactive metadiscourse categories. The most used markers overall were transitions, followed by engagement markers and hedges. This suggests that students tried to capture the attention of their readers and make them participate in the discussion. Still, some markers were misused or overused, which implies that students need more instruction in the adequate use of markers. It can be concluded that adding explicit instruction in the use of metadiscourse markers to the ESP university curriculum would increase the level of students’ pragmatic competence so as to help them avoid pragmatic failures in writing.

INTERACTIVE METADISCOURSE MARKERS IN EFL MAJORS’ SUMMARIES IN ENGLISH

EFL majors’ academic training includes the development of academic skills, primarily academic reading and writing, which are important since English majors have to read many books and papers during their studies and often have to write papers on the basis of what they have read. This implies the students’ ability to decide which parts of the text are important and will be mentioned in the paper they are writing, as well as the ability to synthesize the material in a reader-friendly manner in accordance with the Anglophone academic tradition, which heavily relies on the use of metadiscourse markers that guide the reader through the text. In order to investigate to what extent EFL majors use interactive metadiscourse markers (Hyland 2005, 2010), which concern the writer’s awareness of a participating audience and address ways of organizing discourse, a research study was conducted with 59 English majors in their fifth year (MA level), who read a paper published in an academic journal and were asked to write a 250-word summary. The material was analyzed with the AntConc freeware and the results are used as a basis for pedagogical recommendations that aim at improving students’ training in academic writing.