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Abstract
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Providing learners with knowledge about the application and function of some cohesive devices making coherence in the specific text such as discourse markers may enhance English reading comprehension of the students. This study aimed at identifying and analyzing the most frequent discourse markers in one genre, i.e. medical research articles. It is hypothesized that knowledge of the application and function of these elements in ESP setting is a need to enhance the comprehension of academic text. To this end forty research articles were randomly selected from the prestigious medical journals in five fields of study: gynecology, cardiology, ophthalmology, brain disease, and internal medicines. The discourse markers used in the different section of the articles (abstract, introduction, materials, discussion and conclusion) were extracted and classified into different categories. Based on the analysis of the discourse markers frequencies, it was revealed that according to their application and function, there is a difference between discourse markers with respect to their frequencies and function in different sections of medical articles.
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