Unpacking the Functions of Personal Metadiscourse in Teachers’ Classroom Discourse

Xinxin Wu and He Yang ()
Additional contact information
Xinxin Wu: School of Foreign Studies, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214126, China
He Yang: College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-16

Abstract: This paper reports on a corpus-driven study on teachers’ use of three personal metadiscourse markers, namely, engaging you , inclusive- we , and self-mentioning I , in teachers’ classroom discourse. The analysis is based on eight sessions of teacher contributions to classroom discourse from four native English-speaking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers in the UK. A quantitative analysis shows that teachers unanimously attach great importance to actively engaging students in classroom instructions. The qualitative analysis identified four types of metadiscourse functions in relation to teacher–student(s) interactions, including managing comprehension, managing students’ responses, imagining scenarios, and managing students’ discipline, which were further divided into nine sub-categories. This study extends the scope of existing research on personal metadiscourse functions and enriches metadiscourse research in formal instructional settings, thereby enhancing our understanding of personal metadiscourse use in spoken academic genres. Moreover, it may also provide insights for researchers and practitioners in EAP teaching by providing a fine-tuned functional categorisation of personal metadiscourse markers.

Keywords: personal metadiscourse; spoken academic genres; metadiscourse functions; classroom discourse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13502/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13502/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:20:p:13502-:d:947312

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().