The Effects Of Explicit Instruction And Input Flood On Acquisition Of Discourse Markers By Chinese EFL Learners In Argumentative Writing

A constant study of grammatical and pragmatic research deals with formally and functionally related expressions named as discourse markers (henceforth DMs), which are mainly syntactic classes of adverbs, conjunctions, prepositional or even interjectional words and phrases. DMs can promote the connection of a text or text or discourse, express speakers’or readers’ emotion or attitudes, and arouse the listeners’or readers’ attention. Numerous researches have investigated DMs from various perspectives, which have stirred up disagreements on such fundamental issues as the definition, classification, and properties etc. However, there are still many works devoted to the significant contributions to the above items. This study aims to investigate how Chinese English learners use discourse markers in argumentative writing; and then implements instructional experiments including pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test to measure effects on DMs’acquisition by different enhancement techniques.This thesis initially reviewed the fundamental issues under grammatical-pragmatic connective perspective in which Fraser’s theory on DMs was elaborated in detail. Following elaboration of properties of DMs, pragmatic teachability, Noticing Hypothesis and Input Enhancement Theory were expounded as the theoretical framework for the instructional experiment. The author collected data from the first argumentative composition written by399participants from three remarkable groups and the statistics collected was analyzed through SPSS17.0. Advanced level students were excluded in the immediate and delayed post-test. During the immediate post-test, participants with elementary and immediate proficiencies were divided into four intact groups respectively:control group (CG), input flood (IF) group, explicit instruction (EI) group and input flood+explicit instruction (IF+EI) group. The IF group was provided with a flood of passages from native speakers, while El group received explicit instruction about the definitions, functions and classifications of discourse markers, besides, the teacher also showed some improper examples about discourse markers. The IF+EI group received explicit instruction initially and then input flood treatment. Based on Hernandez’s (2011) study, this thesis examines the effect of input flood (IF), vs. explicit instruction (EI) vs. input flood+explicit instruction (IF+EI) on the use as well as the acquisition of DMs in argumentative writing.Results of pre-test indicated that all the participants employed more or less DMs express semantic and pragmatic relations in their writing and three different proficiencies and demonstrated great differences in the application of DMs with regard to number and variety, that is, firstly, the more advanced proficiency the learners hold, the more DMs they use; secondly, there was no significant difference between proficiencies and use of discourse markers in argumentative writings, and the El group performed best for the elementary level students, while IF+EI treatment was the best treatment for intermediate level students. As to the result of delayed post-test, the control groups kept constant, however, results of experimental groups turned a little complex. All the experimental groups employed more kinds of discourse markers but not all of the experimental groups showed significant difference compared to control groups. Besides, the number of misused discourse markers was also sampled in this section and the input flood played a significant change in the final acquisition for all the participants. To sum up, findings of the pre-test suggest that the English proficiency closely relates to the way discourse markers are used. Although results of the immediate and delayed post-test are complex, we can still find that explicit input enhancement plays a greater role for elementary level students, while an amount of flood of DMs is efficient for intermediate level students. Besides, input enhancement assist in helping reduce the number of misused DMs.Finally, the author drew a conclusion on the major findings, limitations as well as pedagogical implications, which also raised issues for future study.