Comparative Study Of Metadiscourse Markers In Master’s Theses Of Teaching Chinese To Speakers Of Other Languages Of Chinese And Foreign Students

As China’s international influence continues to grow,the number of foreign students coming to China for academic education is also increasing year by year.For foreign students studying for a Master’s degree in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages,writing a dissertation in Chinese is the key to a successful degree.Despite the fact that some schools have started to teach and guide them in this area,the dissertation writing of foreign students has not yet achieved satisfactory results.One of the reasons why writing has become a challenge is that there is still a lack of basic research,especially empirical research,on foreign students’ writing.Therefore,using Ken Hyland’s(2005)interpersonal model of metadiscourse as a theoretical framework,this study compares the metadiscourse use of Chinese students’ and foreign students’ master’s theses in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages at East China Normal University by building a corpus.At the same time,in order to further reveal the characteristics of the use of metadiscourse in the dissertations of students as novices and experts and scholars as skilled writers,this study also includes the journal paper of World Chinese Language Teaching in the comparative analysis to explore in depth the problems of foreign students in the use of metadiscourse,so as to truly improve the science of writing teaching.Through comparative analysis,this study draws the following conclusions.First,foreign students have some internal consistency in the use of metadiscourse in their dissertations with expert scholars and Chinese students.Secondly,there are significant differences between the dissertations of foreign students and the journal articles of expert scholars.Firstly,the dissertations of foreign students cannot fully meet the academic characteristics of objectivity and formality.On the one hand,the metadiscourse markers used by foreign students have a tendency to be informal.On the other hand,foreign students cannot distinguish the difference between written and academic style.Secondly,the metadiscourse markers used by foreign students are not flexible enough and limited to the number of uses.Thirdly,there are significant differences between the dissertations of foreign students and Chinese students.The metadiscourse used by foreign students shows linguistic rigidity.In view of the dissertation writing of foreign students,this study makes the following recommendations:(1)Strengthen empirical research and conduct scientific teaching.(2)Guide students to study more high-quality papers and improve their awareness of academic writing.(3)Strengthen cross-cultural communication and cooperation to improve the quality of dissertations.(4)Provide course support and publish teaching materials or guidebooks.