An Investigation of Metadiscourse Features in International Postgraduate Business Students’ Texts

Abstract

Metadiscourse analysis reveals the way writers engage with different texts and communicate with each other. Examining these linguistic resources is important because they play a vital role in maximizing the learning experiences of students in the Master’s program in Accounting. Yet, there is a lack of research investigating these features in a key topic in the Principles of Finance course: management reports that encompass tables and graphs. This study explores the use of metadiscourse markers in three multimodal management reports written by 10 international Master’s of Accounting students. It employs Hyland and Tse’s model and Hyland’s model for the multimodal analysis of metadiscourse markers in finance texts. The findings show a high frequency of interactive and interactional markers in the orthographic texts compared with a lack of implicit interactive markers and a high frequency of implicit interactional markers in the tables and graphs. Implications for the teaching of English for Business Purposes (EBP) are discussed.