A Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis On The Use Of Discourse Marker And In Oral English Between Chinese EFL Learners And Native Speakers

As a mark in the level of utterances, discourse marker plays a role of pause, transition and so on in the discourse and the verbal communication, contribute to the coherence and organization of the discourse and give indication and reminding to some extent. The proficiency of DMs is beneficial to the successful and coherent communication.Linguists especially pragmatic linguists have been exploring and searching constantly the DMs. Some scholars(He Anping & Xu Manfei 2003; Wang & Zhu 2005; Li Min & Chen Xinren 2007) made comparative studies of the use of discourse markers between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers. This study will investigate the use of the DM and, which is one of the most frequently used DMs by English native speakers and try to answer the follow questions: firstly, what are the situations of DM and used in the oral English by Chinese EFL learners and English native speakers? Secondly, what are the similarities and differences between Chinese EFL learners and English native speakers in the use of DM and? Thirdly,what factors contribute to the inappropriate use of and by Chinese English learners? Lastly, what are the implications to the use of DM and in the cross-culture communication and oral English teaching?Statistics are collected from the corpus SECCL and BNC and analyzed according to the relevance theory. Based on the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the paper is aimed at the research on the usage of the DM and in the spoken English of Chinese EFL learners by comparing with the English native learners and It is found that compared to English native speakers, similarities and differences all exist in the use of DM and in SECCL and BNC. That is to say, generally speaking, Chinese EFL learners have understand correctly and use efficiently the DM and, however, undeniably, there are some problems in the process of employment that cannot be ignored and should be paid attentions to.There are many reasons such as the oral communication pressure, the deficiency of the oral competence and the insufficient of the consciousness on the pragmatic functions of DM and, that lead to the problems in using the DM and by Chinese EFL learners, but language proficiency, negative transfer of native language and pragmatic fossilization is the most important factors contributing to the problems in the present paper. In the process of cross-culture communication, to make the success of verbal communication, Chinese English learners should attach importance to the usage of DM and. Similarly, If English teachers and English learners want to facilitate the improvement of the level of oral English, some specific problems should be paid enough attention.Although there are some disadvantages, the present paper has certain theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, based on the relevance theory and referring to BNC and SECCL, this paper conducts a more specific and systematic research on the DMs; practically, the objective results referring to BNC and SECCL and the systematic analysis on DMs are conducive to the cross-culture communication and English teaching.