A Corpus-based Study Of EFL Teachers' Metadiscourse In Classroom Teaching

Metadiscourse plays an important role in constructing discourse, expressing the speaker's or writer's personalities, attitudes and social relations. It is generally referred to as'discourse about discourse'or'talk about talk'. Metadiscourse, a linguistic phenomenon and a rhetorical and pragmatic strategy, occurs in everyday language, especially in spoken or written academic English. Studies of metadiscourse have drawn vast attention to discourse analysis, language education, pragmatic studies and many other research fields, which are mainly anchored in written discourse (e.g., Vande Kopple, 1985; Crismore, 1989; Cheng, 1997; Intaraprawat, 1998; Hyland, 1998; 2005; Ifantidou, 2001; 2005; ?del, 2006). In addition, the treatment of metadiscourse tends to focus on very specific categories and link one category with one function, either textual or interpersonal.Research into metadiscourse in spoken academic English, especially in English-for-non-native-language speakers'spoken academic English, such as in EFL teaching classroom discourse has remained largely unexplored (e.g., Mauranen, 2001; Pérez-Llantada, 2006; Aguilar , 2008; Hu, 2008; ?del, 2010). Furthermore, few investigations are framed under functional-pragmatic and second language acquisition theoretical foundations for accounting for the utilization and interpretation of metadiscourse in a broad discourse clustering. Although, recently some researchers have studied metadiscourse in academic lectures, they have been inclined to focus on discourse functions. Take a newly research done by ?del ( 2010 ) for example. He proposes the taxonomy of personal metadiscourse in academic lectures, which consists of 23 discourse functions. However, it is worth noticing that he suggests there should be potential analysis of metadiscoursive acts and their wording to be packaged pedagogically, especially for the benefit of non-native speakers of English. He advocates that"anyone using spoken and written academic English needs to be intimately familiar with the rhetorical acts and recurrent linguistic patterns involved in metadiscourse, both for comprehension and for production"(2010:94). On the other hand, it is clear that EFL teachers'classroom discourse is crucially important in terms of spoken academic discourse for non-native speakers of English, for its function as a teaching medium as well as a language input in EFL teaching and learning. So the research into metadiscourse in EFL classroom teaching is significant.The present qualitative and corpus-based study, which is done in the light of Hyland's (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse and his interactive and interactional division of metadiscourse and based on metafunctions of language proposed by Halliday, pragmatic theories and second language acquisition (SLA) theories, mainly attempts to propose a framework of EFL teachers'metadiscourse in classroom teaching. This study attempts to account for interpersonal meaning potential of metadiscourse with reference to relevant contextual features. Moreover, different from the previous studies of metadiscourse which treat specific metadiscourse markers separately, this study explores the multifunctionality of EFL teachers'metadiscourse markers in classroom teaching, especially that of the cooperation and interplay among various metadiscourse markers in a broad co-text, so as to broaden the scope of metadiscourse studies.Therefore, this study is designed to explore answers to the following questions:1) Is metadiscourse pervasive in EFL teachers'classroom discourse? How are metadiscourse markers used in EFL classroom teaching?2) Can the occurrence of metadiscourse in EFL teachers'classroom discourse be elaborated in the modified framework of Hyland's interpersonal model of metadiscourse under functional-pragmatic and SLA theoretical foundations? And if so, how can its occurrence be demonstrated from this perspective?3) What are the functions of metadiscourse in EFL classroom teaching?4) Besides theoretical implications,does this study have any pedagogical implications? And what are they?In order to provide an appropriate resource for investigation, the corpus of 24 EFL university teachers'classroom teaching transcripts is built. Through quantitative analyses of the occurrences of ten subcategories of metadiscourse markers in EFL teachers'classroom discourse, the results show that 196.47 occurrences per thousand words of metadiscourse markers in corpus State-Level Quality Courses (SLQC), which falls into interactional dimension and interactive dimension of metadiscourse, with 143.42 interactional metadiscourse markers occurrences per thousand words and 53.05 interactive dimension metadiscourse markers occurrences per thousand words respectively. Meanwhile, the former dimension takes 73 percent and the latter is 27 percent of the total occurrences of metadiscourse markers respectively. Additionally, it is revealed that among the ten categories of metadiscourse markers, engagement markers rank the highest frequency with 90.10 occurrences per thousand words, taking nearly half part of the total metadiscourse markers. Transition markers rank the second highest frequency with 34.81 occurrences per thousand words, taking 17.72 percent of the total metadiscourse. These are followed by hedges (22.47, 11.44%), frame markers (12.17, 6.19%), boosters (14.01, 7.13%), self mentions (10.84, 5.52%), code glosses (4.90, 2.49%), attitude markers (4.00, 2.04%), endophoric markers (0.81, 0.41%) and evidentials (0.36, 0.18%).On the other hand, through qualitative analysis, this study finds metadiscourse markers embody multiple functions in creating an interaction-oriented monologue of non-native speakers'spoken academic English. Within the modified framework of EFL teachers'classroom metadiscourse, the multifunctionality of metadiscourse markers through their cooperation and interplay in EFL classroom teaching is operationalized in a broad co-text. It is found that metadiscourse markers carry out multi-dimensional functions, particularly transactional function and interactional function, which the former consists of sub-functions of signaling transition from a thesis statement to a supporting evidence, shifting from knowledge transmission to directives, from reporting truths to tentative assertion and from questioning to expounding, and the latter consists of sub-functions of achieving cooperative communication and interaction, establishing politeness and face-saving atmosphere, facilitating efficient'comprehensible input', motivating notice and promoting interaction.In conclusion, this corpus-based study of EFL teachers'metadiscourse provides us with multiple-dimensional analysis of metadiscourse in EFL classroom teaching as well as theoretical and pedagogical suggestions and implications in EFL teaching, learning and teacher-development program.