Small Words Used By English Learners

There has been insightful research into small words (SWs) or under some other names like discourse markers, discourse particles or pragmatic markers in spoken English discourse from the perspective of discourse analysis, contrastive study and EFL learning. In the present study we probe into how English learners with three different language proficiency (Chinese high school students, Chinese college students and native English students, simplified as GZL, CH and NS) use SWs in their spoken English. The study is carried on two dimensionalities: frequency and functions of SWs in use. The research questions are:1. What are the frequency and types of SWs used by learners with different language proficiency?2. What are the functions of SWs realized by its above learners?3. Based on findings to the above two questions what're the developmental features of Chinese EFL learners in learning SWs?This study is a contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA, Granger 1998) based on three mini homogeneous corpora. In accordance with the first two research questions, there're two parts of comparisons: the first comparison concerns about frequency and types of SWs among the three corpora, the second comparison concerns about functional uses of SWs among the three corpora. The lexical analysis tools WordSmith (Scott 1996) are combined with manual classification in data processing.The findings of the present study show that: first, compared with CH and NS, GZL use fewest types of SWs with lowest frequency and they use SWs the most in turn-initial and loner positions. A review of the proportions of the top five most frequently used SWs in their total SWs shows that GZL use a more limited range of SWs.The case studies then made on the functional uses of three small words: just, I think and well show that the functional use of turn-taking in GZL has always been more frequent than that in CH and GZL, which is in accordance with our finding about thehighest frequency of SWs in turn-initial position in GZL, indicating that compared with CH and NS, GZL's functional uses of SWs are more monotonous, in most cases they use SWs to take the turn in turn-initial position.Finally, based on the above research findings, we draw further inference on the developmental features of Chinese EFL learners in learning SWs: with the improvement of their language proficiency, Chinese EFL learners use more types of SWs with higher frequency and their dependence on a limited group of SWs reduced. With regard to using SWs to fulfill different interactional functions, their preference of using SWs for turn-taking decreases, and their functional uses of SWs approach to be more nativelike both in terms of variety and distributionThe research findings of this study provide implications for current EFL teaching and learning: first, we should have our EFL learners recognize the importance of SWs in discourse organizing and smooth communication. Second, in view of the developmental features in learning SWs as reflected in this study, we can adjust our teaching arrangement for the types and different functional uses of SWs in different sequences.