An Empirical Study Of Discourse Markers As English Listening Strategies For EFL Students Of Senior Middle School

It has been universally acknowledged that listening is of great significance in foreign/second language learning.Nevertheless,a vast number of teachers and students find listening comprehension challenging to teach and to learn.In the present study,a 14-week listening strategy training program was carried out to solve the problems in teaching and learning English listening in senior high schools.The program was built on four theoretical and practical bases: First,a questionnaire on listening strategy shows that at present listening comprehension is product-based rather than process-based,and without applying any listening strategies,unfamiliar vocabularies impede the understanding of listening comprehension.Second,so far,little attention has been paid to pragmatic markers as listening strategies.In spite of the few studies on pragmatic markers in listening,no consensus has been achieved as to whether pragmatic markers have positive effects on learners in improving listening comprehension.Third,an investigation on the recent ten years’ National Matriculation English Test and listening exercises in senior middle school shows that pragmatic markers frequently occur in listening comprehension and they are important clues for listeners in understanding the tape-scripts.Fourth,pragmatic markers help hearers understand utterances as they indicate the attitude of the speaker and his/her communicative purpose.Within the framework of linguistic adaptation theory,pragmatic markers are means to adapt to the structure and organization of language(linguistic context),to communicative contexts which include language users(utterer and interpreter),mental world,social world,and physical world and to the dynamic contexts,giving learners signs in understanding listening materials accurately.Therefore,in the present study,the listening strategy training program aims to answer three questions:(1)Is it necessary for pragmatic markers to be employed as listening strategies?(2)Can pragmatic markers as listening strategies improve learners’ listening comprehension?(3)Is there any difference between high-level and low-level students in employing listening strategies? In our empirical study,two parallel classes from senior one were chosen as research participants,35 for experimental class and 34 for control class.The two classes were of same language proficiency as no significant difference was found in the pre-tests.In the 14 week listening strategy training,the experimental class received the strategy-based teaching approach while the control class continued with the traditional teaching approach.Analysis on the questionnaire,pre/post-tests as well as the interview indicated that pragmatic markers can be treated as listening strategies,and significance was found in students’ achievements between the pre-test and post-test of listening.Findings also revealed that high-level students were more skillful in employing listening strategies and more eager for new strategies than low-level students.It is concluded that pragmatic markers have positive effects in improving English listening comprehension,and they can be used as good strategies for learners in practicing listening.It is suggested that teachers employ this strategy in English listening class,and for high-level students,they can be trained with a variety of other listening strategies,while for low–level students,they can be advised to use pragmatic markers as their listening strategy first and then add some other simple strategies gradually.