A corpus-based study on transition marker types in PhD dissertations

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate transition marker types in the PhD dissertations written by the native speakers of English and Turkish speakers of English. The purpose was to compare the most salient transition types of the native speakers of English and Turkish speakers of English randomly selected PhD dissertations introduction, results and discussion, and conclusion sections in the field of ELT between the years 2010 and 2014. The WordSmith Tools 5.0 software was used to analyze the data. TM types were analyzed in terms of percentages, frequencies per 1,000 words and they were interpreted by calculating the loglikelihood value of whether there was a significant difference in their usage. The results indicated that the frequencies, and frequencies per 1,000 words of the most salient transition type usage in the sections were different.