Innovation in Language Learning

The “social turn” of linguistic research has prompted the development of corpus-based empirical studies worldwide. Within the theoretical model of meta-discourse (Hyland & Tse 2004), this paper conducts a corpus-based content analysis, coupled with individual interviews to investigate EFL graduates’ meta-discourse cognition. Meta-discourse refers to language resources used to mark the structure of a discourse, engage the reader, or signal the writer’s attitude. Meta-discourse is classified into two categories: interactive resources and interactional resources. The former consists of transitions, endophoric markers, frame markers, code glosses and evidential markers, while the latter involves hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self- mentions, and engagement markers.The writer needs to make the reader aware of the meta-discourse used in the academic discourse. The findings of the study suggest a tendency of imbalance in the development of meta-discourse, with the Management and Social Science postgraduates utilising more Evidential, Hedge, and Engagement resources than those specializing in Mechatronics Engineering and Computer Science. This study raises the issue of highlighting the cognition and construction of meta-discourse in the English teaching for EFL graduates.

Key words: Meta-discourse; Graduate; Cognition; Construction