Discourse marker use by L1 Chinese EFL speakers

The purpose of the study is to describe discourse markers used by L1 Chinese EFL speakers and to examine the influence of four factors on English discourse marker use in the speech of these speakers: exposure to natural English, overall oral proficiency, different speech contexts (interview vs. conversation), and L1 (Mandarin Chinese).;Data for the study were gathered using individual sociolinguistic interviews and grouped conversations. Five native English speakers and ten L1 Chinese speakers participated in the study. Each participant was interviewed in English. The ten L1 Chinese speakers were interviewed in Chinese too. Then one native English speaker and two non-native English speakers were grouped to converse in English. Finally I conducted a questionnaire with the ten L1 Chinese speakers to seek information of their previous English studies.;A qualitative analysis identified eighteen English markers and nineteen Chinese markers in my data. The textual and/or interpersonal functions of each marker were described. A quantitative analysis revealed that the L1 Chinese speakers used more English markers in the interviews than in the conversations. Individual markers (e.g., oh, so, you know) were found to vary across contexts as well. The second finding is that their native language Mandarin Chinese e.g., wo juede ("I think"), dui ("yeah"), suoyi ("so"), and a ("ah") may have an effect on the use of the English discourse markers. Another finding is that more exposure to natural English and higher oral proficiency with the L1 Chinese speakers lead to more similar performances to those of the native English speakers.;One of the contributions of this study is that it describes the English marker use by L1 Chinese speakers in the target language environment. Participants of previous cross-cultural studies are either L1 Chinese speakers in China or speakers whose native language is not Chinese. Another contribution is that it compares English markers and their corresponding Chinese expressions in order to examine the influence of L1 transfer. Such a comparison has not yet been done in the literature. The third contribution of this study is the identification and analysis of several Chinese markers, which had not been studied in literature previously.