A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. AbstractThis article presents a qualitative, comparative study of metadiscourse in the academic writing of two groups of undergraduate students working in two different disciplines. The groups of students were: 1) Native speakers of Mandarin studying in China through the medium of English; 2) Native speakers of Mandarin studying in the UK through the medium of English. For each group of students, we examined writing undertaken in two undergraduate disciplinary courses: Literary Criticism and Translation Studies. Our aim was to extend research into English writing by L1 Mandarin speakers, and to identify patterns of difference and similarity both between educational contexts and between disciplines.Results suggest that patterns of metadiscourse use in our corpus are associated with both disciplinary and contextual factors, but that contextual factors may have a stronger effect than disciplinary factors. For our data, local institutional culture seems to have a noticeable influence on student writers' use of metadiscourse. 1.

This paper constitutes a multidimensional explanation of an integration of genre-based knowledge and evaluative stance in the context of academic arguments employed in the conclusion sections of English and Malay research articles. For this purpose, it draws on an analysis of the features in Appraisal theory (Martin & Rose, 2003) integrated with an analysis of communicative purposes within a genre analysis framework (Swales, 1990(Swales, , 2004. Among others, the findings include the observation that evaluative and dialogic stances jointly produce rhetorical effects in both English and Malay conclusions. English conclusions contain a subtle balance of assertion and mitigation while Malay conclusions tend to contract dialogic space and thus could be interpreted as less reader-friendly. This suggests that evaluation and the meaning potential of the genre are experienced and valued differently by scholars publishing in these two different scientific communities (international and local). This variation seems to be due to linguistic, contextual, and potential social cultural influences within the two academic discourse communities. The present study has pedagogical implications in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom.

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A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.uk