期刊名称：Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (e-FLT)
电子版ISSN：0219-9874
出版年度：2008
卷号：5
期号：2
出版社：National University of Singapore
摘要：The present study tries to investigate the effects of metadiscourse markers on the comprehension of English and Persian texts. This study, moreover, attempts to measure the participants’ awareness of those markers and their interaction with those texts in both languages by using a follow-up questionnaire. Based on an original English text, a set of 11 True/False questions was developed and used once with that text and once with its doctored version in which metadiscourse markers had been removed. The texts and questions were also translated into Persian and used for a Persian reading comprehension test. The analyses show that the participants performed significantly better on the un-doctored texts although they had read them first, regardless of whether the texts were in their L1 or in their L2. The results reveal that for L2 it was the lower proficiency learners who benefited more from the presence of metadiscourse markers. The results of the follow-up questionnaire also reveal that the difficulty of a text in its general sense had nothing to do with the presence or absence of markers, but the difficulty, in the sense of being able to comprehend the major points of the texts, was closely related to the presence or absence of those markers, with the un-doctored texts felt to be under-stood more. It was also found that higher proficiency EFL learners’ awareness of markers was nearly comparable with their awareness in their L1.
