A Study Of The Effect Of Teaching Metadiscourse Markers On Students' Writing

The teaching of English writing is an important component in English teaching. Now many English teachers are exploring new methods of teaching English writing. The traditional method is to correct students'grammar errors. However, this method causes the passiveness and dependence of the students. Admittedly, we should let students have an active awareness in their English writing. Thus providing a new method for English writing is urgent and necessary. The aim of this thesis is to show that teaching metadiscourse markers can provide such a new method for English writing.Metapragmatic awareness could be measured by a range of metadiscourse markers. Therefore, teaching these metadiscourse markers is necessary to improve students'writing ability.Metadiscourse markers can fully express the textual and interpersonal meanings of discourse. If discourse does not have the textual and interpersonal meanings that are expressed by metadiscourse markers, the degree of discourse consistency will be lowered. Furthermore, we cannot effectively interact with our readers. The communication between the author and the reader will also be hindered.A clear classification and function of metadiscourse markers is presented in this thesis. We taught these important metadiscourse markers to our students for one semester. After the teaching, we analyze the data from two aspects. To begin with, the scores of pre-test and post-test are analyzed with SPSS. While using paired samples t- test to test the mean of pre-test scores and post-test scores, we find the scores have greatly improved after the teaching. In this way, we can get a general command of our research. In the second place, we use the measuring instrument of metadiscourse markers to count the number of each metadiscourse markers in each student's pre-composition and post-composition. Then data are analyzed with SPSS. Having used paired samples t-test to test the mean of each metadiscourse markers'number in pre-composition and post-composition, we find some metadiscourse markers have increased and some metadiscourse markers have decreased. Expectedly, the textual and interpersonal meanings of their composition have improved a lot. The students could proficiently use these metadiscourse markers. Furthermore, the reasons why they have increased or decreased are also discussed in detail. In this way, we can have a detailed command of our research.Absorbed in these two kinds of analysis, we can be certain that teaching metadiscourse markers is an effective way to improve students'writing ability in the writing class.