Evaluation of the candidate in MPhil thesis examiners’ reports at University of Cape Coast, Ghana
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51867/ajernet.7.3.17Palavras-chave:
Candidate, Examiners’ Reports, Evaluation, Linguistic Variant, MPhil Theses, TransitivityResumo
The thesis examiners’ report is a crucial review genre in postgraduate pedagogy. It puts the thesis writer under close scrutiny as s/he seeks membership into the discourse community. The present study examines the thesis examiners’ report, focusing on the thesis writer, the Candidate, as an evaluated “persona”. The data set comprises 100 thesis examiners’ report for Master of Philosophy students from four disciplines. The transitivity system is used as the analytical framework. The findings show that the thesis writer is mostly lexicalised in various participant roles as “Candidate” or “Applicant”, thereby highlighting the position of the thesis writer as a novice being evaluated for acceptance into the discourse community. Regarding process types, material processes are dominantly used to evaluate the research. Relational processes are used for valuation of the candidate. The study contributes to the few studies on feedback in postgraduate education and the findings are relevant to postgraduate pedagogy. Thus, the evaluation of the candidate touched on the intellectual capabilities and other general qualities of the candidate who had undertaken tasks related to the studies such as Literature Review and Discussion. Future studies could consider the use of evaluative language in particular sections of the MPhil theses in the thesis examiners’ reports.
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Direitos de Autor (c) 2026 Rita Akele Twumasi
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