Metadiscourse in Essay Writing: An EFL Case

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether discourse markers training leads to a better writing performance of the EFL learners. The participants of this study were 32 male Iranian students majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology and Amirkabir University of Technology. They received instruction on the application of categories of Hyland’s (2000) model of metadiscourse markers in the essay writing. Two instruments were used in this study: a pretest and a posttest of writing. The results of paired samples t-test showed a significant difference in participants’ writing scores. In other words, the learners performed better in posttest of writing than that of pretest. The findings of this study revealed that the discourse markers instruction was effective in helping the language learners perform better in writing test. It is hoped that the findings of this study make language teachers aware of the necessity of teaching metadiscourse elements to learners and also help them make their students aware of how they can succeed in writing tasks by knowing and using the linguistic elements effectively.