Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews

Various job interview skills training have been carried out to prepare students for employment. However, the outcome of job interviews is questionable, as one of the reasons for unemployment among Malaysian graduates is their inability to communicate competently in job interviews. The Malaysia Educa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies
Main Author: Turiman S.; Abdullah N.; Noor N.M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press 2018
Online Access:https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85052725030&doi=10.17576%2fgema-2018-1803-08&partnerID=40&md5=6024787ea83fadfd04266172a3b85e88
id 2-s2.0-85052725030
spelling 2-s2.0-85052725030
Turiman S.; Abdullah N.; Noor N.M.
Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
2018
GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies
18
3
10.17576/gema-2018-1803-08
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85052725030&doi=10.17576%2fgema-2018-1803-08&partnerID=40&md5=6024787ea83fadfd04266172a3b85e88
Various job interview skills training have been carried out to prepare students for employment. However, the outcome of job interviews is questionable, as one of the reasons for unemployment among Malaysian graduates is their inability to communicate competently in job interviews. The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) stated that unemployed graduates were also lacking in a strong command of English. Since job interviews are placed heavily on verbal exchanges between the interviewer and job candidate, the role that language plays in interaction is worth exploring. This paper investigates spoken metadiscourse in 16 actual first-stage technical and non-technical Malaysian ESL job interviews. Corpus linguistics was employed for data analysis. An adapted framework of spoken metadiscourse is employed to analyse the types and frequencies of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse in the corpus. The findings revealed that both textual and interpersonal metadiscourse were used, but there are variations in the distribution and composition of metadiscourse in the two categories across disciplines. Excessive use of metadiscourse was found to impede communication flow instead of assisting speakers to be persuasive in their speech. This implies the need for targeted instruction on metadiscourse, specifically among language learners in higher learning institutions to facilitate appropriate usage of metadiscourse in speech. © 2018, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press. All rights reserved.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press
16758021
English
Article
All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
author Turiman S.; Abdullah N.; Noor N.M.
spellingShingle Turiman S.; Abdullah N.; Noor N.M.
Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
author_facet Turiman S.; Abdullah N.; Noor N.M.
author_sort Turiman S.; Abdullah N.; Noor N.M.
title Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
title_short Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
title_full Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
title_fullStr Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
title_full_unstemmed Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
title_sort Spoken metadiscourse in Malaysian ESL job interviews
publishDate 2018
container_title GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies
container_volume 18
container_issue 3
doi_str_mv 10.17576/gema-2018-1803-08
url https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85052725030&doi=10.17576%2fgema-2018-1803-08&partnerID=40&md5=6024787ea83fadfd04266172a3b85e88
description Various job interview skills training have been carried out to prepare students for employment. However, the outcome of job interviews is questionable, as one of the reasons for unemployment among Malaysian graduates is their inability to communicate competently in job interviews. The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) stated that unemployed graduates were also lacking in a strong command of English. Since job interviews are placed heavily on verbal exchanges between the interviewer and job candidate, the role that language plays in interaction is worth exploring. This paper investigates spoken metadiscourse in 16 actual first-stage technical and non-technical Malaysian ESL job interviews. Corpus linguistics was employed for data analysis. An adapted framework of spoken metadiscourse is employed to analyse the types and frequencies of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse in the corpus. The findings revealed that both textual and interpersonal metadiscourse were used, but there are variations in the distribution and composition of metadiscourse in the two categories across disciplines. Excessive use of metadiscourse was found to impede communication flow instead of assisting speakers to be persuasive in their speech. This implies the need for targeted instruction on metadiscourse, specifically among language learners in higher learning institutions to facilitate appropriate usage of metadiscourse in speech. © 2018, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press. All rights reserved.
publisher Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press
issn 16758021
language English
format Article
accesstype All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
record_format scopus
collection Scopus
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