Functional Analysis of Transition Markers in Academic Students' Essays: Across-Disciplinary Study

Transition markers contribute as necessary metadiscoursal devices facilitating the reader’s comprehension and improving cohesion in an academic text. Transition represents a change from an idea to the other in writing, fulfilled by the use of transition terms or phrases. English writing classes are increasingly focusing on using transitional words and phrases (Lili ۲۰۲۱). Thus, the current paper aims to examine the frequency and functions of transition markers in students’ academic essays. Hence, ۱۰۰ essays (making a total of ۲۹۳.۶۹۲ words) were chosen from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP) and analyzed according to Hyland's (۲۰۰۵) classification of transition into type and function. It was shown that transition markers had enough frequency to be considered in teaching writing. The results confirmed the links among ideas internal and external to the text. It was also indicated that transition markers mainly used signal additive, causative, and contrastive functions between the main clauses or statements. Moreover, the research results can be directly applied to syllabus design for academic essay writing.