Functional Analysis of Transition Markers in Academic Students' Essays: A Cross-Disciplinary Study

Subject Areas : Journal of Studies in Learning and Teaching English

Azadeh Mallaki ¹ , Seyed Foad Ebrahimi ² , Mohammad Taghi Farvardin ³

1 - Department of English language, Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bushehr, Iran.
2 - English Department, Shadegan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shadegan, Iran
3 - Department of English Language Teaching, Ahwaz branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahwaz, Iran

Received: 2023-02-12 Accepted : 2023-04-10 Published : 2023-06-01

Keywords: MICUSP, Essay, philosophy, English, transition, Metadiscourse Marker,

Abstract :

Transition markers contribute as necessary metadiscoursal devices facilitating the reader’s comprehension and improving cohesion in an academic text. Transition represents a change from an idea to the other in writing, fulfilled by the use of transition terms or phrases. English writing classes are increasingly focusing on using transitional words and phrases (Lili 2021). Thus, the current paper aims to examine the frequency and functions of transition markers in students’ academic essays. Hence, 100 essays (making a total of 293.692 words) were chosen from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP) and analyzed according to Hyland's (2005) classification of transition into type and function. It was shown that transition markers had enough frequency to be considered in teaching writing. The results confirmed the links among ideas internal and external to the text. It was also indicated that transition markers mainly used signal additive, causative, and contrastive functions between the main clauses or statements. Moreover, the research results can be directly applied to syllabus design for academic essay writing.

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