Contrastive Analysis of Metadiscourse Markers Used by Non-native (Iranians) vs. Native (Americans) Speakers in Developing ELT Materials

Metadiscourse is a widely used term in current discourse analysis and language education, referring to an interesting, and relatively new approach to conceptualizing interaction between text producers and their texts and between text producers and users. Despite the growing importance of the term, however, it is often understood in different ways and used to refer to different aspects of language use. In the present study the metadiscourse markers used in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and the ones written by native (Americans) speakers are contrastively analyzed. The framework of this research was Ken Hyland's model (2005) proposed as interactional and interactive resources. The purpose of this study was to see whether interactional metadiscouse markers are different and/or similar in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and native (Americans) speakers and to what extent these interactional metadiscourse markers are different and/or similar. Moreover, this study also aimed at investigating whether interactive metadiscourse markers are different and/or similar in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and native (Americans) speakers, and to what extent these interactive matadiscourse markers are different and/or similar. The data collection procedure was carefully performed and the raw data submitted to SPSS (version 17.0) program to calculate the required statistical analysis in order to address the research questions and hypotheses of the study. The results of the research revealed that the interactive metadiscourse markers were not statistically different in texts developed by non-natives (Iranians) and native (Americans). But the interactional metadiscourse markers were statistically different in texts developed by non-native (Iranians) and native (Americans). Thus interactional metadiscourse markers were not statistically similar in both texts.