A Study of Metadiscourse Identification Ability in Chinese English Majors with Different Oral Proficiency in Shandong Province

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200727.187How to use a DOI?

Keywords

metadiscourse identification ability (MIA), oral proficiency, Shandong English majors

Abstract

In the field of foreign language teaching in China, the weakness of oral English teaching is one main obstacle in college. In terms of previous studies, metadiscourse as a relatively young specialization has been frequently employed in foreign language teaching in the last thirty years. The importance of interactive and interactional metadiscourse in organizing, interpreting, and evaluating the texts is accepted by many linguistics. Various studies have shown that metadiscourse plays a key role in a range of genres and settings, including research article abstracts, academic writing, reading and all kinds of dissertation. However, few studies have given support to the use of metadiscourse in oral language field, especially in English oral teaching field. Thus, this study mainly combines quantitative analysis with previous theoretical studies of metadiscourse to explore the overall pattern of metadiscourse identification ability (MIA) in Chinese English majors in Shandong Province. With reference to the various MIA features of Chinese students, this study further expounds the correlation between students’ MIA and their oral proficiency level. This experimental study involves 120 Chinese English majors in four universities in Shandong Province of China. To explore MIA in the subjects, the researcher designs a test paper based on previous authentic tests and IELTS conversation recordings. All recognized metadiscourse markers are collected and recorded by the researcher. Each type and number of recognized metadiscourse are then put into the computer and processed by statistic software Excel and SPSS, including a t-test. The results of the study show that the overall MIA of Shandong English majors is not as satisfying as we expect. Besides, there is a correlation between MIA and the students’ oral proficiency in terms of the number and types of metadiscourse markers. More specifically, higher oral proficiency students can recognize more metadiscourse markers compared with lower oral proficiency students and there is an obvious distinction in interactional metadiscourse awareness between the two groups of informants. Therefore, it is required to sensitize Shandong students to the functions of metadiscourse so that they can perform in oral contexts and further practical suggestions can be provided for the improvement of oral English teaching in Shandong universities.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Mingyue Sun
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/07/27
TI  - A Study of Metadiscourse Identification Ability in Chinese English Majors with Different Oral Proficiency in Shandong Province
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 5th International Conference on Humanities Science and Society Development (ICHSSD 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 621
EP  - 632
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200727.187
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200727.187
ID  - Sun2020
ER  -