A Study of Interactional Metadiscourse Features in Chinese University Students' Prepared English Speech

Abstract

Speech is an activity in which speakers convey their message to listeners continuously. A coherent, logical argument must be made by the speaker, and audience participation is essential for a successful speech. The majority of prior research on English Public Speaking (hence referred to as EPS) from the Critical Discourse Analysis (hereinafter referred to as CDA) perspective focused on political or academic speech. Although the speech of English language learners (also known as EFLs) has caught the interest of academics. There has not been much study of the interactional metadiscourse characteristics of EFLs' EPS. In this study, we investigate how the usage of metadiscourse influences speakers' performance and the ways presenters engage with their listeners. We do this by drawing on Hyland's stance and engagement framework from 2005. Based on a corpus of 90 prepared speech scripts from high-scoring and low-scoring groups, the results suggest that explicit mentions of oneself and listeners are the most frequent elements, whereas stance markers are employed more frequently than listener engagement markers. Additionally, this study found a positive correlation between the usage of hedges and speech scores and a marginally negative correlation between speech scores and the use of self-mentions. In terms of technique, the interactional metadiscourse analysis on investigating EPS is provided by this study, while in terms of pedagogy, it emphasizes the significance of interactional metadiscourse in EPS instruction.