Exploring Interactive Metadiscourse of Chinese Science Postgraduates’ Academic English Writing

The present study aims to explore the employment of interactive metadiscourse in Chinese science postgraduates' academic thesis writing. Based on the interpersonal model of metadiscourse, this study analyzed the form, frequency and distribution of interactive metadiscourse, using thirty English abstracts of chemistry master's theses selected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure during the period of 2021-2023 as corpus. The results showed that among all interactive metadiscourse, transition markers appeared most frequently and were distributed widely; endophoric markers and evidentials occurred less frequently and were distributed sparsely; the transition marker "and" and the code gloss "( )" were overused and frame markers were underused. Therefore, academic writing instructors should pay attention to cultivating students' rhetorical awareness of using interactive metadiscourse in academic thesis writing to improve the organization of the abstract and make it more scientific. Through the above analysis, this research provides useful insights for academic writing in hard science, especially for improving the English academic writing skills of Chinese novice writers.