An Investigation On The Non-English Major Postgraduate's Use Of Discourse Markers In Writing

Discourse markers are commonly used in English communication. As is known,communication process is a process for the communicative parties to clearly exchangetheir intentions. It is also believed that the use of discourse markers can facilitate thetext organization, call the hearers' attention, indicate the speakers' emotion or attitude,and develop discourse coherence as well as to maintain the communication progressnaturally. As one of the means to communicate with readers, writing can reflect thewriter's language competence to some extent. Students who perform poor in writing,especially in keeping the text coherent, have long been hinted and puzzled since theirtexts are found hard to comprehend. Thus, it is necessary and significant for thepresent thesis to make an investigation over the current situation of the using ofdiscourse markers by the non-English major Uyghur MKM postgraduate students inXin Jiang University. Based on the research data, this thesis also tries to find out thereasons for the learners' misuses of certain discourse markers.Taking the non-English major Uyghur MKM students as subjects, this thesisaims to investigate the learners' use of discourse markers in their writings. After69writings are collected, a micro-corpus was built and retrieval software AntConc3.2.1is used to offer a quantitative result of the using frequency of DMs. While focusing onthe frequency of the DMs used by the students, this thesis also presented the differenttypes of DMs that appeared in the students' writings and reported the learners'misuses of certain discourse markers. Then, by analyzing the position and function ofthe students' misuses of certain discourse markers and with the help of an interview,the present thesis tries to reveal the possible reasons for the learners' misuses.As the results show, a typical characteristic is found on the subjects' using ofdiscourse markers. It is found that in terms of the15types of DMs classified by WangLifei and Zhu Weihua,12types appeared with different frequencies; additive DMs arefound to be the most frequently used DMs and selective DMs are the least used type of DMs by the students; among the12types of DMs, no misuse is found in thelearners' use of temporal and selective DMs; as total error frequency is regarded,causal DMs rank the highest, and qualifacatory and sequential DMs rank the lowest.According to the findings, the potential reasons for the subjects' misuses areconcluded:(1) Due to the fact that the Uyghur students receive English education late,there tend to be less time for them to learn and fully master the techniques of Englishwriting;(2) English teachers tend to overemphasize the cultivation of students' otherabilities and neglect the training of the students' writing ability in theexamination-targeted teaching model. As a result, the learners fail to master the usageof certain DMs, especially the function and the position of certain DMs. Some of thestudents are found have no awareness on using DMs to organize a discourse or text;(3) Mother tongue transfer may also influence the learners' using of certain DMs toproperly present their ideas.The implication suggested by the findings of this thesis is that, both teachersand learners should pay close attention to the roles discourse markers play in Englishwriting, and efforts should be made to recognize the usage and functions of differentdiscourse markers in different languages. Besides, specialized exercises should bedesigned so as to help the learners to master the use of English discourse markers.