A Study Of Metadiscourse Identification Ability Of Chinese English Majors With Different Oral Proficiency

In the field of foreign language teaching, the weakness of oral English teaching is one main obstacle in college. How to improve the oral expression ability of Chinese English majors has been a general topic of academics and language teachers. Metadiscourse as a term is frequently employed in foreign language teaching in the last thirty years. The importance of interactive and interactional metadiscourse in organizing, interpreting, and evaluating the texts is accepted by many linguistics. Various studies have shown that metadiscourse plays a key role in a range of genres and settings, including research article abstracts, academic writing, reading and all kinds of dissertation. However, few studies have given support to the use of metadiscourse in oral language field, especially in the English oral teaching field.Thus, this study mainly combines quantitative analysis with previous theoretical studies of metadiscourse to explore the overall pattern of metadiscourse identification ability(MIA) of Chinese English majors in college. According to different features of MIA in terms of different oral proficiency students, this study further expounds the correlation between students’ MIA and their oral proficiency in detail. The results of this study therefore, provide some practical suggestions to oral English teaching in the college.This experimental study involves 60 Chinese English majors in a university in Shandong Province of China. In order to know the MIA of subjects, the researcher designs a testing paper based on previous authentic tests and IELTS conversation recordings. All recognized metadiscourse markers are collected and recorded by the researcher and an experienced professor in college. Each type and amount of recognized metadiscourse are then put into the computer and processed by statistic software and SPSS.The results of the study show that the overall MIA of Chinese English majors is not as satisfying as we expect. Besides, there is a correlation between MIA and the students’ oral proficiency in terms of the amount and types of metadiscourse markers. More specifically, higher oral proficiency students can recognize more metadiscourse markers compared with lower oral proficiency students and there is an obvious distinction on interactional metadiscourse awareness between the two groups of informants. Therefore, it is required to sensitize Chinese English majors the functions of metadiscourse that perform in oral contexts and to encourage them to employ more interactional metadiscourse as they speak.Through this research, on one hand, we can better understand the overall features of MIA of Chinese English majors in college. On the other hand, by looking in detail the identification features of different oral proficiency students as well as the correlation between the two variables in this research, here further practical suggestions can be offered to the improvement of the oral English teaching in Chinese colleges and universities.