INTERAKTIVNI METADISKURSNI OZNAČIVAČI U INOJEZIČNIM TEKSTOVIMA NA RAZINI B2
INTERACTIVE METADISCOURSE MARKERS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEXTS AT THE B2 LEVEL

Summary/Abstract: Discourse competence is a very important component in the structure of communicative language competence and it refers to the ability to design texts. One important aspect of text production is the appropriate use of interactive metadiscourse markers. This paper studies the use of interactive meta discourse markers by Croatian foreign language users of English and German at the B2 level according to the CEFR. Using a writing task as an instrument, a corpus of argumentative essays containing 82texts per language was collected. The texts were analysed with regard to the use of interactive metadiscourse markers using Hyland’s (2005) classification. The qualitative and the quantitative analyses were conducted using The Sketch Engine tool and the SPSS 20 program respectively. The frequency of the use of frame markers, the presence of expressions typical for higher levels of communicative language competence, the range of types of interactive meta discourse markers, and the proportion of inappropriately used expressions indicate a better mastery of interactive metadiscourse markers by foreign language learners of English. The use of expressions to indicate the order of steps in argumentation by the participants of both groups reveals certain shortcomings with regard to the ability of the global organization of the text. The use of expressions typical of spoken language can be observed among individual participants, regardless of their language. A better understanding of the mastery of interactive metadiscourse markers and especially the problems they pose would be possible through gaining insight into the text production process using psycholinguistic research methods during or after the writing tasks, given that the analysis of the participants’ texts can only identify, but not explain, cases of the inappropriate use of interactive metadiscourse markers.

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