Advanced Spoken Chinese Discourse Markers Acquisition

The thesis classifies Chinese Discourse Markers (DMs) appearing in textbooks ofSpoken Chinese, and focuses on looking into how the foreign students who haslearned Chinese in advanced level acquire these Chinese Spoken DMs throughinvestigation and test, thus analyses the further reasons why they make the errors. Inorder to see what Chinese DMs and how the foreign students actually use in dailyconversation, the thesis collects the real corpus from authentic conversation incomparison with what DMs and how native Chinese use.Here are the five chapters as followed:Chapter1, as the preface, explains the significance of the topic, givesintroduction about the researches of DMs at home and abroad such as the definitionand classification of DMs. It tells the theories, material and methodology the thesisapplies.Chapter2looks into four widely used textbooks of Spoken Chinese, picks outthe DMs appearing in the textbooks and makes classifications of those DMs in orderto see their occurrence rate and the occurrence sequence.According to the DMs with higher occurrence rate what Chapter2has dealt with,in Chapter3a testing questionnaire is made to test the foreign students’(subjects’)acquisition of DMs. The questionnaire is tested by SPSS to ensure its validity andreliability. Then SPSS is used to facilitate the analysis of correlation between thetypes of the errors the subjects have made. In this chapter, it aims at discussing whaterrors the subjects make in different groups according to their nationality andanalyzing the reasons triggered behind.Chapter4collects real corpus from authentic conversation. It records the freetalk and discussion in advanced Spoken Chinese classes without informing the foreignstudents to make sure the authenticity, which helps to see what DMs foreignstudents actually use. Then it studies what DMs are used in Chinese sitcoms and talkshows within the same length of period as the recording. Therefore, comparison ismade in this Chapter between the native Chinese and foreign students using DMs to see the differences and it discusses the possible reasons causing these differencessuch as the input of DMs.Chapter5serves as the conclusion and gives suggestion about how to improveforeign students’ acquisition and usage of Spoken Chinese DMs. Also profoundthinking about the shortcomings is put forward in this chapter.