TY - JOUR AU - Khany, Reza AU - Aliakbari, Mohammad AU - Mohammadi, Saeedeh PY - 2019 DA - 2019/01/16 TI - A model of rhetorical markers competence in writing academic research articles: a qualitative meta-synthesis JO - Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education SP - 1 VL - 4 IS - 1 AB - The knowledge of diverse rhetorical relations is a remarkable component of competence in research article (RA) writing for learners’ successful handling of scholarly writing tasks in English for academic purposes (EAP) programs. This study aimed to present a model of Rhetorical Markers (RMs) competence in writing EAP RAs. In so doing, a ‘qualitative meta-synthesis’ approach was adopted as the research method. A meta-synthesis exercise was framed and the currently available literature on various models of RMs was investigated. 385 relevant abstracts and 321 full papers were screened and a number of 23 studies were appraised for final inclusion. Afterwards, a reciprocal translation was conducted to extract the latent themes and concepts in the general model. More specifically, a thematic coding strategy was applied for synthesizing the selected studies. Then, different obtained themes and categories were synthesized to build the major components of the model of RMs competence. Finally, three super themes of RMs were emerged including: pragmatic markers, meta-discourse markers, and metaphorical markers. The new model, as a conceptual frame of reference, can provide awareness to the EAP researchers regarding the underpinning components of the knowledge of RMs in writing up academic research papers. SN - 2363-5169 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-018-0064-0 DO - 10.1186/s40862-018-0064-0 ID - Khany2019 ER -