Vesna Bogdanović
Faculty of Technical Sciences (University of Novi Sad), SERBIA; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7109-517X
Jagoda Topalov
Faculty of Philosophy (University of Novi Sad), SERBIA; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7100-0444
Višnja Pavičić Takač
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek), CROATIA; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8318-0235
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36534/erlj.2023.03.04
Bibliographic citation: (ISSN 2657-9774) Educational Role of Language Journal. Special Volume 1 (2023) LSD EDUCATION SERVING CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION, pp. 47-60
Abstract
Transition markers are used in academic writing to indicate enumeration and addition, summation, apposition, result, inference, contrast, and transition. These markers, including both conjunctions and adverbial phrases, should be used by students in their theses in order to improve cohesion and reader comprehension. This study examines graduate students’ L2 English writing and provides examples of how students use transition markers, aiming at researching whether L2 English writers overuse/underuse transition markers in relation to L1 English graduate students’ writing. The comparison is made between the corpus of theses written by Croatian students (121,170 words) and Serbian students (255,451 words), highlighting the frequency and appropriateness of the use of transition markers, as well as providing examples of over- and under-usage. Results will indicate that the overuse of markers in the Serbian corpus is due to the lengthier MA theses. In contrast, the underuse of markers in the Croatian corpus may be due to students lacking register awareness.
Keywords: discourse marker overuse, discourse marker underuse, metadiscourse, transition markers, MA student theses
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