| A complete discourse consists of two components: primary discourse and metadiscourse. Nowadays, metadiscourse has become one of the focuses of discourse analysis. The oversea researchers have conducted comprehensive studies on metadiscourse, including theoretical and empirical ones. These studies mainly focus on how native speakers of English use metadiscourse. The Chinese researchers have also shown great interest in metadiscourse, especially in how Chinese undergraduate students use metadiscourse. However, the academic writing by Chinese graduate students has hardly been explored in terms of metadiscourse use. On the whole, the comparative study on metadiscourse use in academic writing by graduate students of L1 English (native speakers, NS for short) and their Chinese counterparts (non-native speakers, NNS for short) typically remains untouched by researchers.Based on two self-compiled corpora, the present study compares the differences and similarities in metadiscourse use between NS and NNS graduate students. This study addresses four principal questions: 1) How do NS and NNS graduate students use metadiscourse in their dissertations? 2) What are the differences and similarities in metadiscourse use between two groups of students? 3) What might be the possible causes of these differences and similarities? 4) What are the pedagogical implications of this study? By frequency counts, Independent Samples t-test and detailed comparative analysis, the author finds that NNS students differ from NS students mainly in their use of frame markers, evidentials, self-mentions and interactional resources. Statistically significant differences also exist. Meanwhile, some similarities in metadiscourse use are revealed. The possible causes of these differences and similarities might be genre conventions, cultural conventions and learner strategies. At the end of this dissertation, pedagogical implications of this study and suggested dimensions for future research are presented.
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