Enhancing Students’ Awareness on Metadiscourse in the Writing of Current Issues

Abstract

Metadiscourse is an important linguistic resource to capture the audience’s attention because it guides readers throughout the text (Dafouz-Milne, 2008; Hyland, 2005). During the pandemic, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) news had become a source of information to the public. However, guidelines in reference books, manuals or websites on how to write COVID-19 news were inadequate (Hyland, 2018). Due to the inconsistencies in the word choice, phrases and sentences, misinterpretations occur among the readers. The study aims to investigate the awareness of the metadiscourse features. In the training, pre-test and post-test of Metadiscourse Awareness Test, as well as news with and without metadiscourse together with the writing prompts in the form of Module 1 were given to 30 students to investigate their metadiscourse awareness. The Metadiscourse Awareness Test could be used as the base line results of the metadiscourse awareness. The writing prompts could gather specific information regarding the texts that they had read. Additionally, the constructed texts with and without metadiscourse could be used as a teaching resource. The expected outcomes will create awareness of using metadiscourse correctly to prevent the reporting of inaccurate information, as well as increase readers’ engagement to combat misinterpretation of the texts.