A study on metadiscoursive interaction in the doctoral dissertations of the native speakers of English and the Turkish speakers of English

Abstract

This study has been conducted to evaluate the transition marker (TM) usage in the doctoral dissertations written by the native speakers (NSs) of English and the Turkish speakers (TSs) of English. The purpose is to compare the TM usage in the introduction, results and discussion, and conclusion sections by both groups’ randomly selected PhD dissertations in the field of ELT between the years 2010 and 2014. The WordSmith Tools 5.0 software is used in order to analyze the data. TMs were analyzed in terms of percentages, frequencies per 1,000 words and they were interpreted by calculating the log-likelihood (LL) value whether there was a significant difference in their usage. The results indicated that the frequencies, and frequencies per 1,000 words of the TM usage in the sections which were investigated of the doctoral dissertations of each group were different.