A Study On The Use Of Discourse Markers By Non-English Majors In Written English

Discourse markers are a hot topic in discourse analysis and pragmatic research.They are the components that do not influence the truth value of sentence, but reflectthe attitude and procedural meaning. Discourse markers include some conjunctions,adverbs and prepositional phrases. Different researchers analyze this languagephenomenon from different perspectives. However, they haven’t reached an agreementon the terms, definitions, classifications and functions of discourse markers. By far mostof the studies mainly focus on the oral discourse and demonstrate that discourse markersfacilitate coherence in the oral discourse.Discourse markers not only appear in the oral language, but also in the writtenlanguage. Hence more and more researchers pay attention to the function of discoursemarkers in the written discourse. This paper analyzes the discourse markers used by thenon-English majors from several perspectives. It mainly discusses the relationshipbetween the discourse markers and the quality of composition; the differences amongthe different levels of English learners; the differences of discourse markers used in thecollege students’ argumentative writing and expository writing. Lastly the author putsup several pieces of advice for the college writing teaching in the future.This paper adopts Wang and Zhu’s classification of discourse markers and takesthe sophomores in non-English major in Chongqing University as the subjects of thisstudy. The samples were collected in the final-exam and limit-time-writing exercisewith180pieces altogether, which include90argumentative ones and90expository ones.They were all scored by the criteria of CET-4,6, then they were stored in the computer.These were two self-built raw corpora.58discourse markers were retrieved withcorpora software AntConc3.2.1to obtain their frequency based on classification. Then,90pieces of samples were chosen randomly from the180pieces with30pieces in eachproficiency (Level A, B, C), to measure the relationship between the use of discoursemarkers and writing quality. By comparing the quantity and category of discoursemarkers in the three levels, the similarities and differences were found out. Finally, thecomparative analysis between argumentative and expository writings was made bytesting the frequency of discourse markers.The findings show that:1) The frequency of discourse markers is not decisive tothe quality of writing; frequent use of DMs is not a guarantee of good writing.2) Comparative study among Chinese college students of different levels in the use ofdiscourse markers indicates that learners of Level A use discourse markers mostfrequently and Level B use discourse markers least frequently. The general trend isLevel A> Level C> Level B. Meanwhile, with language learners’ proficiency increasingin written English, the category of discourse markers used in their writings increasesaccordingly.3) Comparative study between the argumentative writing and expositorywriting shows that: on the whole, there is no significant difference in the frequency ofdiscourse markers used between the two genres. However, in the argumentative writingsthe students use more sequential discourse markers and fillers with meaning, while inthe expository writings the students use more additive discourse markers andadversative discourse markers.At last, the author puts up several pieces of advice on how to improve student’sability to apply discourse markers in their writings.