The Use Of Discourse Markers In The Writings Of Chinese Middle School EFL Learners: A Corpus-based Study

DMs are important clues to understand the relationship of sentences within thediscourse. They are also an indispensable part in the process of organizing a discourse.Hence, this study investigates the use and misuse of DMs in the writings of Chinesemiddle school EFL learners by drawing upon the Writing Corpus of English Learners(WCEL) and the Chinese part of the data from ICCI. Through analysis this study findsthe following:Chinese middle school EFL learners have certain consciousness and ability to useDMs in order to achieve more coherent effects in their writings. It can be foundevidently that Chinese middle school EFL learners prefer using the simplest DMs andavoid using the more complex forms. It results in the too much use of some simple DMssuch as “and”,“but”,“for”, etc. Through the observation of many authentic examples, itis also found that DMs are used where they are not needed to be used in many cases.The misuse in the English writings of Chinese middle school EFL learners are mainlycaused by two main reasons. The first reason is the lack of accurate grammaticalknowledge of different DMs. The second reason is the lack of the awareness of styleand formality. Based on the findings, several implications are also provided forcompiling the textbooks, teaching and students’ learning.