| This M.A. thesis investigates Chinese EFL learners'pragmatic acquisition of English discourse markers such as well, you know and I mean. Comparison research in interlanguage pragmatics has shown that L2 pragmatic knowledge is incomplete for many learners, even those at higher levels of proficiency (Kasper & Rose 1999; Kasper & Schmidt 1996). This investigation contributes to the research in this area and provides information about the existence of a fossilization phenomenon in the use of discourse markers in speech by advanced Chinese EFL learners.The present study compares a corpus of Chinese advanced EFL learners'spoken English with the native English speakers'spoken corpora, and by that means analyzes several common discourse markers in terms of their types, ranges, frequency and discoursal / interactional functions.The results of the investigation indicate that Chinese EFL learners'use of pragmatic markers becomes fossilized in the quantity and diversity of the elements used as well as in the exploration of the various discoursal / interactional functions of certain markers. To be more specific, even advanced Chinese EFL learners do not use English discourse markers as frequently in their oral productions as native speakers do. Besides, the Chinese EFL learners do not seem to have acquired the ability to use a variety of discourse markers, for instance, the markers like I see, I know, and all right rarely appear in their speech --- not even once in 10,000 words. And these EFL learners have not acquired all the pragmatic functions of some discourse markers, either, for example, well.A primary purpose of the study is to make language educators recognize the importance of having discussions about the pragmatic functions of discourse markers in the teaching settings where only the formal aspect of language was given due attention while discourse markers were rendered unimportant, for the lack of them does not affect the propositional meaning of a sentence.
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