A Comparative Investigation of Academic Abstracts between Iranian and British Universities: A Focus on Discourse Markers

Mehdi Mirzaei1 (Ph.D. Candidate), Islamic Azad University, Khodabandeh Branch, Iran
Nader Assadi2 (Ph.D.), Islamic Azad University, Ahar Branch, Iran
Mohammad Reza Hasannejad3 (Ph.D. Candidate), Islamic Azad University, Iranshahr Branch, Iran

Mehdi Mirzaei was born in Tehran, Iran in1981. He got his BA in English Language and Literature from Isfahan University, Iran in 2004. He obtained his MA in TEFL from Iran University of Science and Technology in 2007. Currently, he is a PhD candidate and full time faculty member at the Islamic Azad University, Khodabandeh Branch. His research areas of interest are bilingual education, the role of mother tongue in L2 teaching, and discourse analysis. E-mail: mmirzaei@khiau.ac.ir

Nader Assadi Aidinlou is an assistant professor in Applied Linguistics at Islamic Azad University, Ahar Branch, Iran. He is interested in Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics and Grammar. He has published widely in different local and international journals and presented speeches in different conferences at home and abroad. He has also co-authored "The ABC's of Functional Grammar". E-mail: naderasadi@yahoo.com

Mohammad Reza Hasannejad is a full time faculty member at the Islamic Azad University, Iranshahr branch, Iran. His research interests include reading comprehension, affective factors in second language acquisition and error feedback to second language learners. E-mail: mohammadhassannejad@yahoo.com

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Abstract
Introduction
Statement of the problem
Review of literature
Methodology
Instruments
Procedure
Results and discussion
Implications of the study
Suggestion for further research
References

Abstract

One of the major factors which influence the communicative degree of any written text is cohesion. In expository written discourses, one of which being abstracts, discourse markers (DMs) play a vital role in communicating the message to the reader since they smooth the shift of ideas from one sentence to the next. This study aimed at finding the comparison between the abstracts written by Iranian and British university scholars and specifically focused on the DMs used by them. To do so, 40 abstracts written by British university scholars and 40 abstracts written by Iranian university scholars in the field of TEFL were randomly selected. Then, all types of DMs, according to Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of DMs, were identified and the required statistical analyses were done to investigate how the two groups of writers differ in their usage of DMs in writing abstracts. Finally, the obtained data revealed that British university writers used DMs 19% more than their Iranian counterparts. This shows that Iranian writers require to utilize DMs more in order to approximate their writing to those of their British counterparts in terms of cohesion.

Introduction

The aim of this project is to conduct a comparative study between how British and Iranian university scholars' use Discourse Markers as cohesive devices in the abstracts of their articles in the field of TEFL.

The use of Discourse Markers as a means to enhance the coherence of any expository text plays an important role in the comprehensibility of the texts on the part of the readers. A successful communication of any written text depends highly on the appropriate use of cohesive and coherent devices. According to Halliday and Hasan "a text is a passage of discourse which is coherent in two regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive" (1976, p. 23). On the other hand, they discuss how reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion create cohesion in the text. They indicate that reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion is, as the name implies, lexical; and conjunction is on the borderline of the grammatical and the lexical. The conjunction they mentioned refers not only to conjunctions, but also adverbs and prepositional phrases with conjunctive functions. In this study, it is tried to investigate the role of DMs in the development of TEFL article abstracts and highlight the distinction of their uses between Iranian and British articles.

Abstracts, on the other hand, "present the essence of what can be learned by reading the text" (Martin, J.R. 1992, p. 458). From this, the importance of abstract as the carrier of the heart of a text (article) which appears at the very beginning of any article can be clearly identified. Furthermore, an abstract must provide both a general overview of the work and an outline that guides the reader through the text or serves as a way of selecting the reader’s choices. Therefore, being usually as long as one paragraph, abstracts must convey the work done by the writer in the most effective and comprehensive way because the first impression a reader obtains from an article depends on the communication he/she establishes with its abstract. According to Bazerman (1984), ‘The article’s abstract serves as one further step in turning the article into an object, for the abstract considers the article as a whole and then makes a representation of it.’ (In Swales, 1993:179). The present paper is going to shed light on the similarities and contrasts that exist among abstracts written by Iranian scholars and that of British in terms of their use of DMs.

Statement of the problem

In the area of second language learning and teaching, authenticity is always the criteria against which most evaluations of the produced language are undertaken. Similarly, writing articles in the field of TEFL enjoys the same credibility. Diverging from the norms and standards of academic writing will result in unintelligibility of the produced work and therefore will lack academic credit. Therefore, taking authentic written materials as reference—in the case of this research British university articles—will provide us as a model of how DMs are selected and used in native speakers' abstracts. In effect, the significance of this study has roots in the fact that if we make a valid comparison between Iranian and British research article abstract in the field of TEFL and study their different use of coherent devices, we will reach more awareness as to what degree our abstract writing, in Iran, in terms of appropriate use of DMs, is different from that of British university writers'; and hence, recommendations can be made to improve Iranian scholars' abstract writing.

Review of literature

There have been a number of studies conducted in order to examine the effect of using cohesive devices in written discourses. In some of them, the usage of DMs has been investigated as what influences their explicit and implicit teaching have on leaner's learning English as foreign language, specifically on their writing and reading skills. Moreover, some studies put forward different taxonomies of DMs and suggested ways to implement analysis of their use in written discourse. In this section of the article, different attempts of researchers to highlight the role of cohesive devices is presented with a focus on the studies conducted by Iranian researchers, since the focal point of this research is to compare the abstracts written by Iranian and British University scholars.

It is evident that language learners at different proficiency levels are experiencing problems with the use of DMs. On the one hand, it is generally believed that the larger number of DMs used in writing, the higher quality will be achieved. Similarly, some researchers believe that the use of wide range of DMs leads to cohesion in writing. On the other hand, some learners apply some of the DMs frequently while some do not due to various reasons such as overuse, misuse, and underuse (Rezvani, Bt Abdullah, Baki, 2012).

A study by Jalilifar and Alipour (2007) attempted to determine the effect of explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers on pre intermediate Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension skill. The participants were given three versions of the same test, original, modified and unmodified metadiscourse-free texts. Results revealed that the group receiving the original version outperformed the group with the unmodified version, but their performance was almost equal with the group which received the modified version. Results also revealed the positive influence of form-focused instruction of metadiscourse. It also showed that metadiscourse markers are primarily responsible for cohesion rather than coherence.

In a study by Assadi (2012), he introduced a systematic framework for the interactive instruction of reading based on Systemic Functional Linguistics in which the treated group received SFL-oriented knowledge for 13 two-hour sessions. His detailed analyses revealed that the treated group had a better performance on understanding the lower-level intra-sentential relationships and higher-level contextual components involved in reading comprehension. It was concluded that the SFL-based teaching of reading comprehension had a great effect on the reading comprehension of Iranian TEFL students.

Another research by Assadi and Vafaee (2012) was conducted to investigate the effect of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers on the comprehension of English texts.

This study moreover attempted to explore the effect of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse awareness of learners on their reading comprehension. The results of this study lent supplementary support to the idea that metadiscourse markers can have a positive effect on comprehension. It was also revealed that learners with more awareness of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers performed better on reading comprehension test. They concluded that greater presence of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers could be linked to the better performance of learners.

Kuhi, Yavari, Sorayyaei Azar (2012) collected a corpus of 32 research articles in the field of applied linguistics. The corpus were analyzed in order to find out the cross-sectional (i.e. Introduction-Methodology-Results ¬Discussion/Conclusion) variations in the use of metadiscourse - as a key tool for establishing interpersonal relationships in academic writing. Hyland's (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse was applied to analyze the data set. The findings of this study revealed that the authors utilized interpersonal features differently in the four rhetorical atmospheres of their texts. Writers tended to employ high frequency of interactive metadiscourse resources in the introduction section of their articles, while in the discussion and conclusion sections, writers utilized more interactional resources. Their findings clearly indicated that the differences in the discoursal functions of different sections of a research report play a significant role in writers' fashioning of interactive and interactional features.

Vahid Dastjerdi and Shirzad (2010) investigated the impact of explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers on advanced, intermediate, and elementary EFL learners’ writing performance. The findings indicated generally that explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers significantly improves EFL learners’ writing ability. It was however unpredictably revealed that learners at the intermediate level improved significantly greater than those at the advanced and elementary levels. Finally, the authors firstly call practitioners to pay more serious attention to metadiscourse markers in making EFL curricula. Secondly, they ask for the reinforcement of metadiscourse markers through explicit instruction in EFL courses for the improvement of the learners' writing ability.

Research articles have been investigated regarding their specific genre. Among them, we can mention Hyland's (2004) investigation of master's and PhD dissertation, Hyland's (2002) comparative study on expert and non-expert writings, and Hyland and Tse's (2005) investigation of research articles and dissertations.

According to Martinez (2002), since DMs facilitate communication, we can assume that the lack of DMs in an L2, or their inappropriate use could hinder successful communication to a certain degree, or lead to misunderstanding. L2 students must learn to signal the relations of their utterances to those which precede and follow. Therefore, in terms of communicative competence, L2 learners must acquire the appropriate use of DMs of the L2. Consequently, it is plausible to suppose that those nonnative speakers who are competent in the use of the DMs of the L2 will be more successful in interaction than those who are not.

As far as metadiscourse is concerned, Hyland (2005) believes that “the term metadiscourse was coined by Zellig Harris in 1959 to offer a way of understanding language in use, representing a writer’s or speaker’s attempts to guide a receiver’s perception of a text." Halliday and Hasan (1976) discuss how substitution, reference, lexical cohesion, conjunctions and ellipsis create cohesion in the text. They indicate that grammatical cohesion is achieved through the use of reference, substitution and ellipsis; lexical cohesion is, as the name implies, lexical; and conjunctions, adverbs and prepositional phrases with conjunctive functions are on the borderline of the grammatical and the lexical cohesion.

According to Fraser's (1999) taxonomy of discourse markers, there are three main subclasses to DMs namely, (a) contrastive markers that signal that the explicit interpretation of the second sentence contrasts with an interpretation of the first sentence. (b) Elaborative markers that signal a quasi-parallel relationship between the sentences. And (c) inferential markers signal that the following sentence is a conclusion derived from the preceding sentence. Finally, Fraser (1999) distinguishes some additional subclasses: a group of DMs which provides reasons. In this group we find: after all, because, for this/that reason, since. However, since I believe that this taxonomy doesn't include all the existing DMs, I will add to Fraser's second subclass of DMs (elaborative markers) that signal a quasi-parallel relationship between sentences, those DMs which signal that there is a conclusion between the content of the sentences (in short, in conclusion, etc.), and DMs which signal that the content of a sentence is to be taken as a concretion or example of a previous generalization (for example, etc.).

According to Hyland (1998, cited in Assadi & Vafaee, 2012), metadiscourse markers are of two categories, namely textual and interpersonal metadiscourse. The textual function is the use of language to organize our information in a way which enables the listener or reader to understand our message easily. On the other hand, the interpersonal function is "the use of language to establish a relationship with others to give or demand information or good and service, or to express our attitudes to or assessment of something" (Pandian & Assadi, 2010, p. 16).

Assadi & Vafaee ( 2012) add that there are five types of textual metadiscourse which consist of a) Logical connectives which are used to express semantic relation between sentences, for example: in addition, because, but, however, therefore and since. b) Frame markers which refer to text stages such as firstly, finally, to repeat. c) Endophoric markers which are whether the reminders of previous content or as a reference to the information in other parts of the text and generally used as spatial metaphors. d) Evidentials. They refer to the source of information from other texts. And e) Code glosses which help the reader to understand the ideational material better such as namely, in other words, in that.

Moreover, they mention that interpersonal metadiscourse are of five categories: a) Hedgs which are the writer's full commitment to the statements or his/her interpretations. b) Emphatics which enable the reader to realize the degree of writer's claims and force of writer's certainty in massage such as in fact, definitely, obviously. c) Attitude markers which express the writer's perspective or evaluation of the propositional content. d) Relational markers. Relational markers refer to the relationship with the reader. They directly address to the reader and include the reader to the text, thus making the test interactional. And e) Person markers which contribute to signal the author's presence in a text.

Blakemore (1993) considers that the essential function of elements like likewise, therefore, because, etc. is to guide the reader's interpretation process through the specification of certain properties of the context and the contextual effects; more specifically, these elements constrain the relevant context for the interpretation of an utterance, reinforcing some inferences or eliminating other possible ones and thus help process the information.

Methodology

Instruments

In order to compare the use of DMs between Iranian and British research article abstracts in the field of TEFL, 60 research abstracts are to be selected—30 Iranian and 30 British ones. The Iranian abstracts are collected from online journals such as World Applied Sciences Journal, International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, etc. And the British abstracts are selected from British university websites mainly www.dart-europe.eu.

Procedure

There are various Taxonomies of DMs proposed by different authors such Halliday (1985), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1983), and Fraser (1999). However, the classification used in this research to analyze the abstracts was adopted from Halliday and Hasan (1976) who focus on cohesive relations between clause complexes and set up additive, adversative, casual and temporal as kinds of logico-semantic relation at primary delicacy. A comprehensive table of such category is presented below.

Therefore, the abstracts under study here were read carefully word by word and the number and type of DMs in the texts were identified. Finally, the statistics obtained from quantifying the DMs showed us how Iranian writers, as non-natives, use DMs in comparison to the writers of British universities. To do this, the mean and percentage of the DMs of each type in Iranian and British abstracts were compared. In addition, the percentage of any specific DM to the total of them was provided. As a result, we are arrived at conclusions as to what degree the abstracts written by Iranians deviate from British university writers in terms of DMs usage. The mentioned steps are going to be explained in detail below.

According to Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of discourse markers, DMs are classified under four general classes: additive, adversative, causal, and temporal. All these four types are either internal or external. As shown in the table above, there are a number of subclasses to each type. Similarly, for each subclass there are some DMs which exemplify them; for instance, furthermore, in addition, besides, and alternatively are additive markers from Complex-emphatic type.

In this study, after reading the abstracts, all the DMs were specified and counted. The findings which include the percentages and their comparison between Iranian and British university authors are presented in the discussing section.

Results and discussion

A descriptive analysis of the DMs was conducted to identify the comparison between Iranian and British university scholars in terms of their use of DMs in abstracts of articles in the field of TEFL. To do so, 30 articles written by Iranian university scholars and 30 articles written by British university scholars were studied and the types of DMs and their frequency in the two groups of articles were recognized. The tables below manifest a comprehensive analysis of the DMs and highlights how the two groups of abstracts defer.

Table 2. Types and frequency of DMs in Iranian university abstracts

Table 3. Types and frequency of DMs in British university abstracts

As can be seen from the tables, the total number of DMs used by British university scholars was 113, while Iranian university scholars used 91 DMs in 40 abstracts. The first impression we get from this data is that DMs are used 19% more by British university writers than their Iranian counterparts. If we consider discourse markers to be cohesive devices in written texts, we can conclude that the abstracts written by British university scholars tend to be more cohesive than Iranian ones. However, the number of DMs types used by both groups of writers was considerably different. For example, additive DMs comprised 32% of the DMs used in Iranian abstracts, while they comprised 30% of DMs used in British abstracts. On the other hand, adversative DMs made up 12% of the DMs used in Iranian abstracts, while they made up 19% of DMs used in British abstracts. This shows that Iranian writers generally tend to use more additive DMs than the British and the British university scholars make use of adversative DMs more than Iranian ones.

Moreover, what proved to be evident in the data was that Iranian writer used causal DMs much more than British writers in their abstracts. One third of the DMs used by Iranians were causal ones, while only 11% of DMs used by British writers were casual. What we can conclude from this is that the type of studies conducted by Iranian university scholars are mostly cause-effect ones. Another difference marked between the two groups is the use of temporal DMs. While Iranian abstracts had 23% of their DMs temporal ones, British abstracts enjoyed a percentage of 40 for temporal DMs. According to the above findings it can be concluded that additive and casual DMs were the most frequently used DMs by Iranian university scholars; nevertheless British university scholars tended to make use of temporal and additive DMs more than other toes of DMs.

In summary, what was aimed at this study was to evaluate the abstracts written by Iranians against those written by British university scholars. In effect, it was evident that British writers made use of different types of discourse markers more than Iranians which reflects the fact that there is divergence in Iranians' cohesive writing from British university writers. This alarming fact suggests that there should be more quality training of writing skills in general, and cohesive writing in specific in Iranian universities. We can also conclude that the teaching of writing plays a very important role in educational success of Iranian students since their acceptance in an academic ground rests highly on their effective writing skills one of which being cohesion.

Implications of the study

Based on the findings of this study it can be claimed that Iranian university students will write better and more successfully if they are given formal teaching about cohesion. The familiarity with the cohesive devices and how they function help writers build up a text which better conveys their intentions and hence, readers will have a more complete understanding of the written text.

In fact, the implications of this study are twofold: first, it provides scholars with understanding about cohesive writing and highlights the importance of the use of DMs in academic texts. Secondly, it helps the readers of academic articles to pay attention to the role the DMs play in order to more fully comprehend the message of the writer.

Finally, language teachers ought to be aware of the importance of explicit teaching of cohesive devices to learners as a means to enhance the quality of their writing. Moreover, language teachers can examine the effect of instructing learners about DMs on their writing quality.

Suggestion for further research

The present study aimed at distinguishing how Iranian and British university scholars use discourse markers in writing abstracts. Although the attempts, here, have only been focused on DMs, other studies can be conducted to investigate other textual features of abstracts. For example, researchers can compare the grammatical features of abstracts written by Iranian and British writers. In addition, the same features can be compared between Iranian and other countrys' scholars, especially those of non-native speakers. That way, we can examine how differently writers from different countries use DMs.

An Error analysis is worth conducting on the use of DMs by language learners. In this analysis, different types of errors such as the erroneous use of DMs, the location of DMs in sentences, the type of DMs used for different purposes, and the variety of DMs used for the same meaning can be detected and suggestions can be made to avoid them.

This study only concentrated on the use on DMs in the abstracts of articles; however, such usage can be investigated in other parts of articles or throughout the whole article. Most articles include sections like, introduction, statement of the problem, procedure, methodology, instruments, results, and conclusion. A potential area of research can be to compare in which of these sections the number of DMs used is the most and what types of DMs are used more frequently in specific sections of the article.

Discourse markers are devices to increase the cohesiveness of texts. Yet, other devices which enhance the cohesion of texts such as the use of pronouns, the repetition of key word, and other methods to smoothen the shift of ideas in a text should be investigated and their efficiency compared to other cohesive devices ought to be investigated.

Different disciplines and subject matters might utilize DMs differently and with different degrees. It is interesting to know what types of DMs are more common in specific disciplines and which are less common. Additionally, it can be investigated that whether all areas of study make use of cohesive devices similarly and if the number of DMs used in different subject matters are different.

The effect of teaching DMs to learners and its effect on the correct use of these cohesive devices can be another source of research. Many learners are not familiar with the correct use of DMs and do not know how effective their writing would be with their using them. Therefore, teachers are advised to study the effect of teaching of the significance of cohesion and how to write cohesively on the learners' writing ability.

Moreover, modality vs. polarity of sentences is another potential area of study that can be conducted to compare different written discourses. Finally, sentential complexity is of importance to be studied across articles in order to investigate the degree of the usage of embedded sentences as a mark of higher quality writing.

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Rezvani, A., Bt Abdullah, A., Baki, R. (2012). Constructing an Organized and Coherent Text: How Discourse Markers Are Viewed by Iranian Post-Graduate Students? International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2, 196-202

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