Research On The Correlation Between Chinese Discourse Markers And Oral Fluency Of Foreign Students

Discourse markers(hereafter DMs)play an important role in producing well-organized and coherent discourse.However,there is a lack of empirical research concerning the use of DMs and its correlation to Chinese learners' oral fluency.Based on various researches and the conclusions of the same kind of research.Chinese DMs can be defined as a kind of special functional words with independent intonation units in pronunciation,flexible position in sentences,expressing procedural rather than conceptual meanings.And Chinese DMs can be classified as topic-organizing DMs,modal-expressive DMs and filling DMs.In order to investigate the foreign students' use of Chinese DMs.this study uses oral test to obtain the foreign students' oral expression recordings,and then transposes the recordings to know the students' use of various kinds of Chinese DMs.Three characteristics of using Chinese DMs by foreign students are summarized:the types and forms of Chinese DMs used are far lower than those used by native Chinese speakers,and they are concentrated on the repeated use of a few Chinese DMs,The first,middle and high levels foreign students show different stages of characteristics in the use of Chinese DMs.In the process of using Chinese DMs,there are a few errors,and students show personal preference in their use.In order to further explore the correlation between foreign students' use of Chinese DMs and their oral fluency,this study analyzed the oral recording samples and obtained the speaking rate,articulation rate,phonation time ratio,mean length of runs and average length of pause of each recording sample.Through the SPSS analysis,there is a correlation between the use of Chinese DMs by foreign students and their oral fluency:There was a significant positive correlation between the use of topic-organizing DMs and modal-expression DMs to speaking rate,articulation rate,phonation time ratio.mean length of runs,but a negative correlation to average length of pause.Besides,there was a negative correlation between the use of filling DMs to speaking rate,articulation rate,phonation time ratio.mean length of runs,but a positive correlation between the use of filling DMs to average length of pause.Finally,the results of the study on the use of Chinese DMs and their correlation with oral fluency are analyzed respectively.Based on the analysis and discussion,the author thinks about the current situation of DMs teaching in Chinese teaching and puts forward some teaching suggestions.