Chinese Contrastive Discourse Markers. College English Teachers' Classroom Study

Over the years, the research on discourse markers(DMs) focuses on the text coherence by using DMs in behavior of speech, turn-taking and the adjustment of proposition content. That has been ignored about the contrastive analysis of DMs in English and Chinese, as well as the effects on the usages in different context, with different speakers, their relations, their social positions and puissance.This thesis makes study on the discourse markers used in the classroom by the English teachers in the university, which analyzes the connotation, categories, form features, pragmatic functions and the reasons causing the differences with synchronic and contrastive analytical methods, so as to reach the aim that the teachers consciously make use of discourse markers in their teaching language and develop the students' abilities to use DMs in their talk.Starting with the research background of discourse markers, relevant theories, the methods of studying and significance, this thesis makes analysis of many problems and the elements, which affect the teachers properly using discourse markers, through describing the English teachers using DMs in English and Chinese. Based on the relevance theory, it makes a conclusion on the similarities and variations of DMs pragmatic functions in speech communication, and analyzes the reasons in aspects of language, culture, speaker's roles and relations, etc. Meanwhile it also shows that discourse markers are the major measure to build the context of utterance and context of situation, and that the teachers should be aware of the pragmatic input, utilizing the strategies of combining the explicit and implicit instruction, pragmatic contrast and pragmatic reflection to input the authentic material, in order to construct a better environment of English language acquisition. This thesis comes up with some pedagogical suggestions for college English teaching.