The Effects Of Pragmatic Markers On Listening Comprehension In EFL Environment

The researches on pragmatic markers have a series achievement since the 1970 s.However,no consensus has been reached by scholars on the definition and functions of pragmatic markers.Linguists have employed different approaches to the study of pragmatic markers from different perspectives,various schools have emerged.Within the framework of Relevance Theory,in human communication,pragmatic markers perform as constraints on discourse production and comprehension of different levels of information in a discourse.The speaker directs the hearer to find the optimal relevance by virtue of the inferential connections that pragmatic markers express,and then the greatest contextual effects are achieved with least processing effort.However,the experimental study on second language education focus mainly on two fields: reading process and dialogue.Few studies have been done on the function of pragmatic markers in listening process of second language learners.And the empirical study on pragmatic markers in listening comprehension tends to focus on College Students.By drawing upon the previous studies on pragmatic markers and listening comprehension,the present study,120 students of grade two in one senior high school of Gansu were participated in the experiment.After an intervention period of eight weeks,where the experimental group received the instruction in recognition and interpretation of pragmatic markers in Audio-texts,experimental and control groups again were tested to examine whether pragmatic markers play an important role in L2 listening comprehension of different levels of information in a discourse in post-test stage,and their results were quantitatively compared.The current study reveals that: 1).Pragmatic markers have beneficial effects on the comprehension of the main ideas and supporting idea in a discourse.2).The effect of pragmatic markers is significant for both high proficiency level learners and low proficiency level learners,but the effect on low level proficiency level learners is more significant compared with high proficiency group.Through the experiment and the analysis,the study verify that the pragmatic markers’ instruction in the listening course do facilitate and improve students’ listening comprehension.Therefore,the interpretation of pragmatic markers can be integrated into listening teaching.In addition,this study also provides some enlightenment for the current listening teaching,that is,the second language teachers cultivate students’ ability on grasping the structure of the discourse and predicting and reasoning from the aspects of class teaching,listening and oral practices,thus improve their listening proficiency.