A Study Of The Effect Of Metadiscourse Knowledge On English Writing Of College Students

English writing is an important part in Chinese college English teaching. Many teachers try to find an effective way to improve students’writing ability. Some studies have shown that m etadiscourse plays an im portant role in second-language writing. One of the distinctive scholars, Hyland, has talked about the values of m etadiscourse in teaching. He notes that second-language learners have dif ficulties in using metadiscourse, and textbooks are short of emphasizing the usage of metadiscourse. So the researcher believes that it is necessary to integrate metadiscourse into teaching processes. Teachers can first develop students’awareness of audience, and categories and functions of m etadiscourse should al so be taught. S tudents can improve their writing proficiency by using metadiscoure effectively.This research first introduces the background of metadiscourse, and then states some famous theories about m etadiscourse. This study is based on Hyland’s theory. Otherwise, some empirical studies about metadiscourse in teaching are also provided.College students are not good at English writing, so they need to find a way t o improve their writing a bilities effectively. This research aims to find out whether teaching metadiscourse in English classes for colleg e students can im prove their writing proficiency. The subjects of this study are freshm en major in pre-edu cation from a norm al university in North-East China. They are divided into two groups (experiment group and control group) for one term experiment. The experiment group is taught metadiscourse knowledge in the process of English teaching; and the control group needs to imitate the model essays in the process of English teaching. Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse is referenced by teacher, and students can learn metaidiscourse markers and their fu nctions according to that. Teacher gives students writing tasks to two groups be fore and after the experim ent, and the results of both groups are seen as their pretest and posttest scores. After a term’s study, the researcher uses SPSS to compare the results of pretest and posttest of two groups. And the results show that there is a more sign ificant improvement of experiment group students in writing scores. This research als o collects the quantity of di fferent kinds of metadiscourse markers in experim ent group before and after the experim ent and analyzes the reasons. This study has proved th at teaching metadiscourse in English classes is an effective way to improve students’writing proficiency. And after learning metadiscourse knowledge, students use metadiscourse better in their compositions.