Metadiscourse Use in L2 Student Essay Writing: A Longitudinal Cross-Contextual Comparison

我国大学本科生英语作文中元话语使用:基于语料库的纵向对比研究

This paper investigates developmental patterns of metadiscourse use in Chinese students’EAP writing in an English medium university,in comparison with English majors’EFL writing in mainstream state universities and L1 student writing in UK universities.Taking a longitudinal and cross-contextual perspective,the study explores corpora of L1 and L2 student writing gathered from three sources:EAP essays written by Chinese undergraduate students at an English Medium Instruction(EMI)university;argumentative essays written by English majors in the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(WECCL);and academic essays of English L1 students from the British Academic Written English(BAWE)corpus.Hyland’s(2005 a)model of metadiscourse was adopted to identify interactive and interactional devices in each corpus,and results were compared between different levels as well as across the corpora to reveal developmental features.Findings show marked differences in metadiscourse use between Chinese EMI students’EAP essays and English major students’EFL essays in mainstream state universities,whereas a similar pattern of use occurred in EAP essays and English L1 student academic essays.Significant changes were also found between different year levels in two L2 essay corpora.The findings suggest that metadiscourse use in L2 writing had developmental trajectories distinctive to different institutional contexts,with EAP instruction in the EMI institution having mixed effects on Chinese students’awareness and use of metadiscourse in essay writing.

本文研究我国大学本科生英语作文中的元话语使用特征,研究语料来自国内一所英语为教学语言的中外合作高校学生在三个学期所写的学术英语作文,并以《中国学生英语口笔语语料库》中的国内英语专业学生非限时议论文和《英国学术书面语语料库》(BAWE)中英国本科生的学术论文为参照。研究以Hyland(2005a)的元话语理论为框架,比较分析了三个语料库中中英本科学生元话语使用和跨年级的发展变化。研究揭示,与非限时议论文相比,学术英语教学环境下的学生英语作文呈现明显差异的元话语使用特征,且部分特征与英国大学本科生的学术论文相近。不同于英国大学生,中国学生在学术英语写作和非限时议论文写作中元话语使用的跨年级变化显著。研究表明,学术英语教学能促进我国本科学生写作中元话语使用,但也可能产生过度教学效应。