An Empirical Study of Acquisition of English Discourse Markers Among Chinese EFL learners

As a functionally related group of expressions (Schourup 1999), discourse markers (henceforth DMs) are extensively used in daily communications. In general, they are considered as the pragmatic ‘glue’ of conversation (Schiffrin, 1987), indexing the speaker’s attitude toward the listener and the discourse (Aijmer, 2002; Fraser, 1990).  Discourse markers have been described and categorized differently by various authors (Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen, 2011; Müller, 2005; Schourup, 1999). Although no consensus emerged regarding the terminology, many scholars (Schiffrin 1987; Fraser 1996; Blakemore 2002; Liao 1992; Ran 2000b; Lv 2007) have reached agreement about the fundamental characteristics of DMs: they are used to relate utterances or other discourse units; their role in the sentences are operational since they do not affect the truth-conditions of a sentence; and more often than not, they occur initially in a sentence to introduce the discourse segment they mark.  

Discourse markers have been considered from a variety of perspectives and approaches, e.g. as signaling “a sequential relationship” between utterances (Fraser 1990; Fraser 1999), as marking discourse coherence (Schiffrin 1987; Lenk 1998), and from a relevance-theoretic point of view (Andersen 2001; Blakemore 2002; Blass 1990; Jucker 1993), to name just a few. While a good deal of research has been conducted on DM use in native speech and even English as a foreign language (EFL) settings, in the literature on second language acquisition (SLA), the field of discourse markers has been omitted so far. Little research has been conducted on the acquisition of these markers by Chinese EFL learners. Little research has been aimed at the development of discourse marker competence among language learners, including Chinese EFL learners. How do non-native learners learn how to use DMs? How learners might acquire these skills? Questions like these abound in the field of DMs and await research. Therefore, this study will explore aspects regarding acquisition of English discourse markers among Chinese EFL learners.

Based on the theoretical foundation and the classification of Fraser, this research will be accomplished in three steps.

(1) The first step will be devoted to identifying the characteristics or problems among Chinese EFL learners in the acquisition of written English DMs. Based on are the existing native English corpus (BNC) and Chinese learner corpus (CLEC), I will do a thorough analysis of characteristics regarding the use of the contrastive DMs by the Chinese EFL learners.

(2) In order to explore more deeply the use of discourse markers, this sub-study aims to explore how language transfer plays a role in acquisition of discourse markers among Chinese learners. I will examine whether the same differences also occurs in the spoken language and examine how language transfer influences the acquisition of discourse markers.

(3) Based on the result of the first and second steps, this part will investigate the contributing factors in the teaching practice that influence acquisition of DMs. I will do the class observation and make the survey for the teachers and students to explore the factors in the class context to contribute to the inappropriate acquisition of discourse markers among Chinese EFL learners.