METADISCOURSE - A TECHNIQUE FOR IMPROVING STUDENT WRITING

Metadiscourse is a construct that is increasingly important in both co mposition and reading research. The purpose of this study was to explo re, first, how metadiscourse can enhance the writer's awareness of rea ders' needs and, second, how the use of metadiscourse is related to th e quality of the texts that students produce. In this quasi-experiment al study, university-level student writers in the experimental class w ere taught metadiscourse in addition to a process method, while those writers in the control class were taught composition through only a pr ocess method. Pre- and post-treatment student papers were analyzed to determine whether metadiscourse usage was different and how the interp ersonal, textual, and ideational components of the texts in the two gr oups were affected. The results of the analysis indicated that the exp erimental group benefited from instruction about metadiscourse: Studen ts in the experimental group produced essays that received significant ly higher grades than those in the control group. Qualitative in-depth analyses of the essays of the experimental students further showed th at this improvement can be attributed to the use of metadiscourse mark ers, which made the texts move accommodating toward readers, and to th e strengthening of the ideational as well as the interpersonal and tex tual meanings of the texts. These results suggest that teaching studen ts to use metadiscourse may be an important way to improve their writi ng skills.