ENGAGEMENT MARKERS IN DISCUSSION SECTION OF RESEARCH ARTICLES WRITTEN BY ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDENTS AND ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN REPUTABLE ENGLISH JOURNAL: A COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE STUDY

Many studies concerning on engagement markers (EMs) have been conducted among
international authors. However, it doesn’t really trigger Indonesian scholars to study
this discipline. Based on this fact, this research aimed to compare the use of EMs in
15 discussion section of research articles (RAs) written by English Education
students of Bengkulu University and 15 RAs published in reputable English journal.
The corpora were analyzed by using the documentation checklist with quantitative
approach. The results showed that the more frequent types of EMs employed by
students were knowledge appeals and directives. Similarly, experienced authors of
RAs published in reputable English journal employed the same dominant EMs.
However, the order of the least prevalent markers in both corpora was slightly
different in which students’ RAs were reader mentions, questions, and personal
asides while experienced authors’ RAs were questions, reader mentions and personal
asides. The result of Chi-square test indicated that the differences on EMs used in
both corpora were significant in term of quantity (with Asymp sig. 0.000) which
experienced authors used a greater amount of EMs. In conclusion, the higher
frequency of EMs in experienced writers’ RAs signifies authors’ awareness on using
EMs to construct relation with readers. Therefore, it is important to emphasize the
use of EM in academic writing. Further study is suggested to analyze the accuracy
on the use of EMs in the corpora and focus on particular type of EMs for achieving
more comprehensive findings.
Key words: engagement markers, experienced authors, research articles discussion,
students