Metadiscourse In English Theses By Chinese And English Writers In Applied Linguistics

This study focuses on the comparison of metadiscourse use in English thesisIntroductions between English native speakers and Chinese EFL writers in linguistics,which aims to identify the similarities and the differences in metadiscourse usebetween the two groups of students. The results of the study are expected to provideinstructors with pedagogical implications of teaching metadiscourse in Englishacademic writing at its advanced level in Chinese classrooms.The samples investigated in the study are two self-compiled corpora, eachconsisting of20English thesis Introductions in linguistics written by Chinese writers(the NNS corpus) and their counterparts in English-speaking countries (the NS corpus).Based on Hyland’s (2004) classification of metadiscourse, the statistical softwareAntConc was employed to count the frequencies of metadiscourse use in our corporasupplemented with the manual method. Then the independent samples t-test by SPSS(15.0) was conducted to see if there were statistically significant differences infrequencies and types of metadiscourse use between the two groups. Next, a textanalysis was performed to examine the detailed information of metadiscourse use.Results show that on the whole both the NS and the NNS corpora use moreinteractive metadiscourse than interactional ones; however, the two groups aresignificantly different in the use of interactional metadiscourse, but not in the use ofinteractive metadiscourse. The most and the least frequently used metadiscoursemarkers are completely the same in both corpora. Besides, the two groups seepronounced differences in the use of transitions, evidentials, attitude markers, andengagement markers. Possible explanations for the similarities and the differences inmetadiscourse use between the two groups are discussed from mainly threeperspectives: interlanguage, knowledge of EAP conventions, and cultural conventions.