Metadiscourse repertoire of L1 Mandarin undergraduates writing in English: A cross-contextual, cross-disciplinary study

Ting Li, Sue Wharton*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

98 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This 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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)345-356
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume11
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2012

Keywords

  • Academic writing
  • Chinese learners
  • Corpus based
  • EAP
  • Metadiscourse

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