The use of metadiscourse in good and poor ESL essays

Interacting with Readers: Metadiscourse Features in National University of Lesotho Undergraduate Students’ Academic Writing

“…Other studies on student writing, however, reported more counts of metadiscourse. For instance, Crismore et al (1993) reported more than one instance of metadiscourse per line, Intaraprawat and Steffensen (1995) reported one instance in 15 words, and Hyland (2004) reported one instance every 21 words. These differences could be explained by the fact that the data sets are not directly comparable.…”

“…There are studies of the use of metadiscourse, for example, in school textbooks (Crismore 1989), undergraduate textbooks (Hyland 1999), postgraduate writing (Bunton 1999;Hyland 2004) and academic research articles (Harwood 2005;Hyland 2001;2002;. In addition, metadiscourse has also been recognized as a feature of good ESL and native speaker writing (Cheng and Steffensen 1996;Intaraprawat and Steffensen 1995) and an important aspect of good persuasive and argumentative discourse (Thompson 2001). …”

“…Another relevant study is that of Intaraprawat and Steffensen (1995). They compared the use of metadiscourse in six good and six poor persuasive essays written by final year undergraduate and first year postgraduate ESL university students from French-speaking Canada.…”

Effect of Metadiscourse on Reading Comprehension of Iranian EFL Learners

“…In general, "metadiscourse embodies the idea that communication is more than just the exchange of information, goods or services, but also involves the personalities, attitudes and assumptions of those who are communicating" (Hyland 2005, p. 3). Metadiscourse helps writers to organize the text in a way that increases the cohesion of a text by making the relationships between different parts of the text explicit (Intaraprawat & Steffensen, 1995). It helps writers to address their audiences and engage them in a developing dialogue.…”

Grammatical Forms of Text-Organising Metatext: A Slovene-English Contrastive Analysis

“…Metatext, or metadiscourse, is used to organise a text and help the reader interpret and evaluate it. Research on metatext/ metadiscourse has been carried out by a number of linguists (e.g., Williams, 1981;Vande Kopple, 1985;Clyne, 1987;Crismore and Farnsworth, 1990;Ventola and Mauranen, 1991;Mauranen, 1993a;Mauranen, 1993b;Intaraprawat and Steffensen, 1995;ValeroGarcés, 1996;Hyland, 1997;Bäcklund, 1998;Bunton, 1999;Hyland, 2000;Fuertes-Olivera et al, 2001;Crawford Camiciottoli, 2003;Hyland, 2005;Ifantidou, 2005); many of these studies focus on intercultural rhetorical differences in academic discourse, in which successful intercultural discourse production/reception is essential.…”