A Study Of Discourse Markers Based On Spoken English Of Non-English Major Graduates

There are many words and phrases in English which do not have any important meanings but they have many important functions, such as well, you know, I mean, right, however, still, in addition, uh/um, if, unless, yet. Discourse markers are such a kind of common linguistic phenomenon, which contribute to cohesion and coherence of discourse in a text and to the interaction in communicative activities. They also play many important roles in the utterance interpretation since they are information markers in utterance activities although they contribute little to the semantic meaning of utterances. Discourse markers are characterized by pragmatic dynamics and their functions are not partial but integral to the development and understanding of utterances.(He Ziran, Ran Yongping,2001).Based on the transcriptions of spoken English from40non-English major postgraduates in Taiyuan University of Technology, the thesis intends to study their characteristics and patterns in the use of discourse markers with reference to the American National Corpus. It also intends to test whether their oral English is on the way close to the target language by comparisons of six different periods within their one-year study. The research questions are the following:1).How frequently is discourse markers used by non-English-major students? Are there any differences between the two corpora in the use of discourse markers? And what are the reasons underlying them?2). What are their characteristics and regular patterns in their discourse markers use?3). Can the class play an important role in the progress of discourse markers? How to improve the proficiency of their discourse markers? What are pedagogical implications? Based on relevance theory, the thesis is to analyze discourse markers in oral English which are collected from40non-English-major postgraduates during one academic year (2010.10.27-2011.5.31). The40participants are selected from about160non-English-major postgraduates, Grade One, who come from two classes and all are taught by the same English teacher in Taiyuan University of Technology. With the help of Antconc, Excel and Chi-square and likelihood calculator, the statistical analysis of the result indicates that:1).Comparison between the frequency of the nine discourse markers the natives used the most and that of the participants from the six recordings shows that their similarities are trending down. It also indicates that they are fossilized in the use of discourse markers to a large extent, which means that their competence of discourse markers didn’t improve after one year’s study.2).In comparison with the natives, the participants present limited use in terms of varieties of discourse markers on the whole. The result demonstrates that they prefer such discourse markers as uh/um and because to those such as well and you know, which is contrary to the preferences of the natives. Making a detailed analysis, we can attribute the overuse of some discourse markers to the influence of mother tongue.3).The dynamic study of changes within one year shows that the participants make no progress in using of discourse markers. The study shows that teachers should pay more attention to the discourse marker teaching and students should practice a lot to improve the spoken English level.In conclusion, there are also many differences between the participants and the natives in the use of discourse markers. Contrary to my expectation, they have not improved their proficiency after one-year study. Many studies both at home and abroad show that discourse markers are a tool to measure the students’ oral English level. Classroom teaching method is a very important reason to why the students cannot learn the discourse markers well. The present English class focuses on grammar teaching, while how to speak English naturally is often ignored, let alone the explanation of discourse markers in ordinary practice. Therefore, the non-English-major postgraduates’ consciousness of using discourse markers should be emphasized in English teaching because it can improve their discourse competence rather than simply use them as a communicative strategy. Teachers should encourage them to use discourse markers in daily communication and to do more practice.