Discourse Markers For Chinese High School Students To Understand And Recall The Impact Of The Short Hearing Materials

This paper reports an experimental study carried out at a high school to find out the effect of discourse markers on EFL listeners in China. The study was undertaken mainly to explore the relationship between discourse markers and their effect on foreign language learners'comprehension and recall of the information conveyed. Participants included thirty senior three high school students, twenty girls and ten boys. A tape of six short passages was used as source material. Each passage was constructed into two different versions, one with discourse markers and one without discourse markers. The participants first listened to the first version, answered some comprehension questions and recalled the main propositions of the listening passages. The participants did the same with the version with discourse markers. Findings suggest that in general the effect of discourse markers on the comprehension of the participants is not statistically relevant and that discourse markers have effect on their recall of the information but the effect is not statistically significant. But case studies show that discourse markers have effect on the comprehension of one third of the participants with low efficiency and that participants with high efficiency seem not to be influenced as much as those with low efficiency when recalling the information they heard. When the participants recalled the information they heard on the tape, they didn't exactly copy but added some discourse markers when necessary.