Interactive and interactional metadiscourse are linguistic features used to maintain the coherence in essays. It involved a one-way interaction between the writer and reader, thus a challenge for Second Language (L2) learners to write effectively and comprehensively. A study is done on how the L2 learners produced the metadiscourse features and the usage is compared. A corpus of 200 evaluative essays by UiTM undergraduate students from computer science and business administration courses is analysed based on Hyland’s (2005) framework. The purpose is to find out the amount and types of metadiscourse used and whether students from different course groups make any differences in their choices. The analysis revealed that students in both courses produced more interactive than interactional metadiscourse. The most prominent feature is Self-mention and the least is Attitude Markers. The same prominent feature for both courses is Transition Markers. The business administration course shows the least feature in Evidentials, whereas Frame Markers in computer science. These are evidence as to the importance of metadiscourse in students’ academic writings and awareness is shown in its usage. This could lead to a proposition for a metadiscourse writing comparison between secondary schools and universities to gain fascinating outcomes. Keywords: Evaluative writings, Interactional metadiscourse, Interactive metadiscourse, L2 learners, undergraduates
This present study was conducted to reexamine motivation and attitude of language learners and its correlation to their learning achievement. Low English language proficiency among Malaysian students has drawn researchers' attention to conduct the study within higher learning institution. This cross-sectional study was carried out involving 329 participants those were required to respond for selfadministered questionnaire and taking four language skills test which was developed by researchers with the assistant of experience language lecturers. Descriptive and inference analysis were adopted to answer the research objectives. The finding has demonstrated that participants of the study have higher integrative motivation (8.07) and moderate level attitudes towards the learning of English language (6.81). However correlation test has shown a there is a low correlation (r = 0.111) between students' motivation and English language achievement tests. Whereby there is a moderately low correlation (r = 0.224) between students' attitude and English language achievement tests. In future investigations it might be possible to study other types of motivation such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in order to determine the success for language learners. 1. Introduction Many Malaysian students have poor command of English even after graduation (Engku Suhaimi, E.A., Zailani, J., Alia Nabila, A., 2012). Poor English proficiency may affect employment prospect since English is undoubtedly widely used in IT Communication and in commerce and industry not only internationally but also locally (The Star, Sept. 11/2013). Following this statement, The Federation of Malaysian Manufactures (FMM) requested that English be made a must-pass subject by 2018 (The Star, Sept. 11/2013). Low English language proficiency among Malaysian students is a never ending issue. Marlyna, Siti Hanim and Mohamad Subakir (2012) indicate that through their study a majority of the students' proficiency levels in English were below the entry level of the university's requirement. Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh claims that many English language teachers are "incapable" or "unfit" to teach the subject in schools when the results for the English Language Cambridge Placement Test sat by them showed that 70% out of the 60,000 performed poorly (The Star, Sept. 11/2013). Therefore this research is carried out to observe students' English language achievement in terms of their four basics English skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) at one of the universities in Terengganu. Many researchers have shown that students' attitudes towards the learning of English language are negative and less interest (
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