A Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis On EDMs Between Chinese EFL Learners And Native Speakers

Discourse Markers (hereafter DMs) are a kind of common language phenomenon which is useful in discourse interpretation. It can facilitate or constrain the comprehension of discourse. Linguists, especially pragmatic linguists, have done extensive research on discourse markers, and the results of it are taken as important projects in pragmatics, a speaker employs What strategy a speaker employs to guide the hearer to the related message in Chinese and English is considered of great importance. The study of DMs has much to do with the kind of subjects.The research questions of the thesis are:1.What are the types and frequency of EDMs used by Chinese EFL learners and native speakers? 2. What are the differences on the positions of EDMs in sentences by its above speakers? The research is quantitatively and qualitatively carried out in two different corpora. The two corpora are:WECCLE (2.0) and LOCNESS. The design of the research is:1. Use AntConc offered by SWECCL to check out the frenquency of each EDM that occurs in the two corpora.2. Use Loglikelihood Ratio Calculator and SPSS to analyze the data collected to check out whether the differences in types and frequency of EDMs are significant or not.3. Discussion about the research findings.The research findings are as follows:1. On the whole, Chinese EFL learners use more EDMs compared with native speakers.2. Sometimes Chinese EFL learners place EDMs in the similar positions of sentences as native speakers do, while sometimes the two speakers place them differently. Through the contrastive analysis of EDMs between the two corpora from China and Belgium, the thesis hopes to shed light on English teaching and provide useful help for Chinese EFL learners.