The Use Of Discourse Markers In Spoken Chinese Of Foreign Students

Discourse markers refer to the language fragments that only has pragmatic function and free from truth meanings and conceptual meanings.They are independent with sentences,playing a great role in language communication.Discourse markers have a high frequency in oral language,in order to ensure a communication course be completed successfully,every interlocutor should try their best.It is discourse markers that guide the communication process have higher efficiency,which by the communication information that provided by the talker.From the perspective of pragmatics,this paper is based on the Cohesion Theory,Relevance Theory,Conversational Implicature Theory and Cooperative Principal,and make an overall analysis to the use of discourse markers by overseas students.This paper chooses the oral material from Chinese Bridge Worldwide College Chinese Competition as language material,classifying the discourse markers in the material.The mainly analysis is focused on the discourse markers which was used by overseas students in higher efficiency,another two dimension is nationality and gender.Making an error analysis to the use of discourse markers by overseas students,clarifying the type and causes of the error,providing some teaching suggestion to Chinese teaching.Based on the previous studies,this paper making following developments.Firstly,conducting a descriptive analysis from the entirely perspective to the discourse markers used by overseas students.Secondly,having a more clearly partition to the type of discourse markers.Thirdly,making an examination in detail to the situation of discourse markers from nationality and gender perspective.The research data shows that the frequency of the usage of discourse markers within competitors are in general accordingly,in the rank of "Topic-Organized Markers>Elaborated Markers>Contrastive Markers>Deferment Technique Markers>Toned Markers>illustrative Markers".In the case of gender,the frequency of male is higher than female.In addition,the type of discourse makers is different from male and female.Fourthly,making a detailed analysis to the high-frequent discourse markers to overseas students.Making an assumption about the error of discourse markers among overseas students,providing concerning teaching suggestion and thinking to the discourse makers.Hopefully,this paper can expand the search perspective and idea of discourse markers,enrich the research of discourse makers,and provide some practical teaching suggestion to the area of TCFL.