The Writing Performance of Iranian EFL Learners in the Light of Metadiscourse Awareness Sima Farhadi Islamic Azad University, Ahar Branch, Iran Nader Asadi Aidinloo Islamic Azad University, Ahar Branch, Iran Zahra Talebi Islamic Azad University, Ahar Branch, Iran Abstract—In the framework of language teaching, the writing skill requires to be encouraged during the language learners’ course of study. Since metadiscourse markers help transform a tortuous piece of text into a coherent and reader-friendly one, knowledge about the metadiscourse, amongst other things, is used to improve writing skill. The current study aimed to investigate the influence of instruction of metadiscourse markers on intermediate EFL learners’ writing performance by using metadiscoursal taxonomies proposed by Hyland (2005). For this purpose, a pet test was administrated to 60 intermediate students in Iran Language Institute in Urmia. Having being homogenized by Preliminary English Test (PET), they were assigned randomly into two groups. Both the control and the experimental group sat for a pretest of writing test in the form of a cloze test which aimed to measure the learners’ initial knowledge of writing performance. The experimental group was exposed to explicit instruction of metadiscourse markers for seven successive sessions. On the other hand, the control group didn’t receive any instruction. Eventually, a post test designed to evaluate their writing ability with the focus of metadiscourse markers was administered to both groups. The findings implied generally that the implementation of metadiscourse markers (via instruction) significantly improves EFL learners’ writing ability. Index Terms—metadiscourse awareness, interactive resources, interactional resources, writing performance I. INTRODUCTION Regarding the communicative framework of language teaching, the skill of writing is specialized through the notion that it needs to be encouraged during the language learners’ course of study. Although it has been regarded the most difficult aspect of language teaching, it can easily reflect the learners knowledge of language in combining the sentences nonverbally. According to Jalilifar (2008) regarding English as an international language and its extensive use, a large number of second or foreign language learners are involved in academic aims requiring them to write well. Via writing a person communicates a variety of messages to his/her readers. In order to deliver meaning to the reader and set the writer's goals, the skill of writing is a highly involved process requiring the use of a range of linguistic material which is thoroughly explained within following lines. NNSs (Iranians, according to the present study) must struggle hard to produce acceptable writing. Canagarajah (2002, p. 12) states, “we shouldn’t be surprised that L2 students fall short when L1 writing is treated as the norm or point of reference” According to Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Maxims, the writer must attempt to write a clear, relevant, truthful, informative, interesting and memorable text. Producing coherent discourse requires the integration of what the writers already know with information from other sources. In the process of writing, by means of using the conventions of spelling and grammar, writers formulate their own thoughts, organize them, and create a written record of them. Mastery of vocabulary and grammar rules is of great importance in producing grammatically correct sentences, but not sufficient to help learners produce meaningful sentences which respect coherence (coherence suggests that the ideas in the writing hold together) in pragmatic level and cohesion in Semantic level (Dergisi, 2010). Writers are required to consider that grammar and discourse function together and they must use cohesion appropriately. One of the fundamental factors to be focused is that planning to write a well-organized text requires taking cohesion and coherence into consideration. The organization of sentence of a text or a written discourse is not as simple as putting up bricks one upon one, there are some relationship between those sentences. Halliday and Hassan have considered a text as “not just a string of sentences. It is not simply a long grammatical unit, something of the same kind as a sentence, but differing from it in size, a sort of super sentence, a semantic unit“(1976, p:291). In the skill of writing, in order to show the logical or semantic relations between the previous information and ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 923-928, September 2016 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0705.12 © 2016 ACADEMY PUBLICATION