The Study Of The Use Of Discourse Markers In Chinese EFL Learners' Oral Production

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of discourse markers (DMs) by Chinese EFL learners. In this study, the interviews from 30 senior English majors of HEU are transcribed for the exploration of Chinese EFL learners'DMs use, and the British National Corpus is selected for comparison. By analyzing five DMs in Chinses students'oral production, the results show that Chinese students have employed the functional use of DMs to some extent, whereas they have not acquired all the pragmatic functions of a discourse marker as the native speakers do, in addition they may overuse or misuse the functions of a DM. This thesis suggests that Chinese students are not aware of the use of DMs in their oral production as well as the importance of DMs in discourse organization and smooth communication, thus, teachers should not only give them explicit instructions on DMs in class, but also encourage them to use DMs in their oral language.