Metadiscourse in academic writing instruction for Iraqi EFL tertiary students : a mixed methods approach

Abstract

This study explores academic writing in theory and practice in the Iraqi English as a foreign language (EFL) tertiary context. It aims to contribute to both the lack of knowledge in this area and to solve a range of complex writing challenges encountered by Third-year tertiary students. Due to the prevalent banking education orientation which emphasises rote learning practices that hamper students from thinking critically and generatively, writing instruction has long been misunderstood, misused, distorted and ignored in Iraqi EFL education. This study reflects on such practices and applies approaches to writing instruction that enable students to thoughtfully transform knowledge and address readers to enable better exchange of ideas for social interaction. An interpersonal model of metadiscourse in writing instruction, combined with knowledge transforming and reader-oriented approaches to writing are incorporated in a teaching and learning intervention that aims to turn student' writing from knowledge telling and writer-oriented to knowledge transforming and reader-oriented. The study adopted an action research design. The teacher-researcher implemented the intervention in three phases over 41 lessons in writing argumentatively, with metadiscourse instruction as a focus, through one semester of a Third-year class in writing in the Department of English, University of Basrah, Iraq. Through the intervention a convergent mixed methods approach for data collection and analysis was carried out to answer the qualitative and quantitative questions of the study and for the purpose of triangulation. Pre- and post-intervention focus group interviews with the students were thematically analysed for the qualitative strand of the study. Argumentative writing tests were administered on five different occasions to the same purposive sample of students (n=32). Results from the tests were assessed using a multiple trait scoring rubric developed in the study and were statistically analysed for the quantitative strand of the study. Qualitative and quantitative findings reinforce each other. In the qualitative strand, data shows that the intervention has improved students' writing ability in terms of both quality (knowledge transformation, cohesion, coherence, organisation and audience awareness) and in terms of quantity (content fluency and use of metadiscourse in both variety and frequency). In addition, the reading habits of participating students have become more analytical and purposive with the writing task in mind. From the quantitative strand, on the other hand, three major domains of influence have been identified across the five writing tests. Students have: 1) achieved statistically significant higher scores in the four scales of the rubric used for writing assessment; 2) achieved statistically significant higher frequency and variety in metadiscourse usage; and 3) demonstrated statistically significant correlations between metadiscourse use, scores and word counts. Thus, both qualitative and quantitative findings have been compatible and reinforce each other; they confirm that metadiscourse instruction in the intervention has significantly influenced the quality and quantity of the students' writing. This study presents another contribution to the field of metadiscourse theory and practice in a different in-class application and context. It has explored, applied and integrated metadiscourse in knowledge transforming and reader-oriented approaches to writing instruction to emphasise the social interaction function of writing that is currently not used in Iraqi EFL writing pedagogy. The study has given a fresh and significant focus to writing theory and practice in this context. Also, it has developed and applied a multiple trait scoring method to move writing assessment from a merely holistic approach to a more analytical, context-sensitive, and above all, flexible method of EFL writing assessment. In conclusion, metadiscourse research in the broad Iraqi EFL context is a completely fresh area that can open up a variety of new research directions. Metadiscourse use or instruction effects could be tested on other language skills (reading, listening and speaking); investigated in contrastive discourse analysis of different genres of writing; and similarly applied to Arabic language.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English