Metadiscourse in Academic Writing: An Investigation of Saudi EFL Students' Research Articles

Abstract

This study investigated the type and frequency of metadiscourse markers used in fifty research articles written by Saudi EFL college students. In analyzing the data, Hyland's (2005) model of metadiscourse was adopted. The findings showed that there are significant differences in the frequency of interactive and interactional metadiscourse. The students employed more interactive metadiscourse markers than interactional ones. The analysis further revealed that transitions occurred most often in the research articles, followed by hedges. The least used metadiscourse markers were endophoric markers and attitude markers. To conclude, some pedagogical implications for teaching English writing to Saudi EFL college students were drawn from these findings. It can be noted that Saudi EFL college students need more training in using interactional metadiscourse to be able to convince the reader of their ideas and arguments in a text. In addition, they must be more aware of the importance of using metadiscourse in improving their writing skills in general.

Comparisons of Interactive and Interactional Metadiscourse among Undergraduates

“…The most prominent and the least metadiscourse features produced by BA course The two figures above show the metadiscourse features produced by computer science (CS) and business administration (BA) courses. Based on the interactive metadiscourse graph, Transition markers were the highest feature used by CS students with 945 which is similar to the result by Alkhathlan (2019). Transition Markers link the relations between main clauses like in addition, but, thus, and, first, next etc.…”

“…Hence, we conclude that CS students preferred to use the features in interactive metadiscourse as compared to interactional metadiscourse and likewise to BA group. Apart from that, according to interactive metadiscourse graph, the least metadiscourse feature was Evidential with 66 produced by BA students while in interactional metadiscourse graph, the least metadiscourse feature was Attitude markers with 16 produced by CS students in which agreed with the result of study by Alkhathlan (2019). Attitude Markers are to indicate the writer's opinion or assessment of a proposition such as 'I agree, I am amazed, appropriate, correctly, dramatic, hopefully, unfortunately etc.…”

A corpus-based analysis of Arab scholars’ use of interactional metadiscourse markers

“…Additionally, transitions and hedges were found to be the most frequent markers in both genres. Alkhathlan (2019) investigated the type and frequency of occurrence of MDMs in 50 RAs by Saudi EFL college students. It was found that the students employed more interactive metadiscourse s than interactional ones.…”

“…This size accompanying one, two or three sections was scrutinized and the results might be questionable. Third, Alharbi (2021) and Alkhathlan (2019) investigated Arab scholars' use of MDMs in the Arab context. Nevertheless, the two studies suffer from the shortages mentioned above and Alkhathlan (2019) collected his data from college students who might not be proficient writers.…”

“…Third, Alharbi (2021) and Alkhathlan (2019) investigated Arab scholars' use of MDMs in the Arab context. Nevertheless, the two studies suffer from the shortages mentioned above and Alkhathlan (2019) collected his data from college students who might not be proficient writers. This study looks at 198 published RAs (1.089.723 tokens) in an effort to fill in all of these gaps.…”