Metadiscourse in Chinese and American graduate dissertation introductions

Abstract

The current study aims to look at differences in the use of metadiscourse in the introductory sections of English and Chinese university students. The corpus of the study comprises 20 “introductions” of university students’ MA theses. This study hinges on Hyland’s model of Metadiscourse (interactive and interactional resources) for its methodological framework and aims at analyzing academic writing of native academic and non-native writers. The findings revealed a statistically significant difference in the use of metadiscourse in theses written by Chinese native speakers (CNS) and English native speakers (NS) university students. The study suggests that metadiscourse needs to become a fundamental component for effective reading and writing instruction for students.