A Corpus-based Study Of Chinese English Majors' Use Of Discourse Markers In Their Oral Production

This thesis reports a study whose aim was to investigate the use of discourse markers (DMs) by the Chinese English majors in their fulfillment of oral tasks in a testing situation, with a primary focus on the effect of different oral test tasks on use of discourse markers, and a secondary focus on the differences in the use of discourse markers between test-takers of different oral proficiency levels.Spoken data employed for the present study were taken from SECCL, a Chinese learner corpus, in which three test tasks were involved: story retelling, talk on a given topic and role play. 30 TEM-4 test-takers were chosen for the purpose of the study, and thus there were 30 sampled cases for each task. On the basis of the test-takers'overall scores, test-takers were divided into higher- and lower-level groups. The classification followed in the data analysis was mainly based on the integration of Philip's, Pauk's and Schiffrin's framework. Data analysis yielded the findings as follows:Firstly, Chinese EFL learners use discourse markers most frequently in conversational turns and least frequently in story retelling, suggesting that L2 speakers'use of DMs is controlled in the varying degree by the task requirements. In other words, speakers may produce utterances more freely in conversations than in story retelling and talking on a given topic.Secondly, logical-connector-type markers (LCTMs) are used most frequently in the task of impromptu speech and least frequently in the task of role play, which implicates that L2 speakers may resort to LCTMs as the strategy of organizing their ideas into an integrated whole when required to talk on a given topic. Filler-type markers (FTMs) are used most frequently in the free oral production through role play, which partially explains why LCTMs are least used in role play. However, FTMs are used least frequently in story retelling, which suggests that fewer attentional resources have to be allocated to the content of the talk. It may then be concluded that the nature of different tasks may produce an obvious effect on the use of DMs by L2 speakers.Thirdly, cross-level comparisons reveal that L2 learners'use of discourse markers increases along with oral proficiency level, which moderately indicates that use of discourse markers may promote L2 learners'oral proficiency.The findings yielded in this study may have some implications. Pedagogically, the quantitative description of discourse markers identified in L2 learners'speech may give English teachers insights into the effect of the nature of different oral tasks (for example, the task complexity) on L2 learners'use of discourse markers, and accordingly L2 teachers may arouse students'awareness of the role of discourse markers in constructing spoken discourse. Future study of L2 speakers'use of discourse markers may be conducted in comparison with native English speakers'or L2 writers'.