A study of the acquisition of discourse markers by Chinese learners of English

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of discourse markers by Chinese learners of English in terms of gender, style and individual identity. The subjects of the study are 15 female university students and 15 male university students. The data is collected by means of audio recording in the classroom discussion and in the interviews. The examined discourse markers are like, yeah, oh, you know, well, I mean, right, ok and actually , and a total of 1292 tokens for these discourse markers are identified in the subjects' classroom discussion and in the subjects' interviews. The results of the study show that: (1) the female subjects use discourse markers more frequently than the male subjects. (2) all the subjects employ discourse markers in the interviews at a higher rate than in the classroom discussion. (3) the subjects' individual identity has the effects on their use of discourse markers. (4) the subjects display their individual variations in their frequencies of discourse markers in the interviews and in the classroom discussion respectively. KEYWORDS: discourse marker, acquisition, Chinese learner of English, sociopragmatics. RESUMENEl presente estudio investiga la adquisición de los marcadores discursivos de los estudiantes chinos de inglés en lo relativo al sexo, el estilo y la identidad individual. Las personas investigadas son 15 estudiantes universitarias y 15 estudiantes universitarios. Se recogen los datos mediante grabación de audio en forma de discusión en clase y entrevista. Los marcadores discursivos investigados son: like, yeah, oh, you know, well, I mean, right, ok y actually. En la discusión y la entrevista, se identifican 1292 marcadores discursivos. El resultado del estudio demuestra que: (1) Las personas investigadas femeninas utilizan los marcadores discursivos con más frecuencia que los masculinos. (2) Todos los sujetos investigados utilizan los marcadores discursivos en la entrevista con más frecuencia que en la discusión en clase. (3) La utilización de marcadores discursivos de los sujetos investigados está influida por la identidad individual. (4) Los sujetos investigados muestran variación de frecuencia en el uso de los marcadores discursivos en la entrevista y la discusión en clase.PALABRAS CLAVE: los marcadores discursivos, la adquisición, estudiantes chinos del inglés, la pragmática social.

Discourse Markers in Learner Speech: A Corpus Based Comparative Study

“…A similar distributional pattern between NNS and NS speech has been observed in the functional category of you know marking common ground information. This function of you know has been reported in previous research as well (Bu, 2013;House, 2009;Huang, 2011;Müller, 2005). An example of this assumed common ground is seen in ( 5) and ( 6).…”

“…Depending on the fact that studying discourse markers is at the interjection of syntax, pragmatics and semantics, it is admittedly a difficult task to create definitive lists of DMs in a language, -even little agreement has been reached on its terminology. Various researchers examined the concept under various labels such as "discourse particles" (Aijmer & Stenström, 2002), "pragmatic markers" (Aijmer, 2004;Downing, 2006;Wei, 2011), "discourse connectives" (Blakemore, 1992), among them "discourse markers" (Bu, 2013;Buysse, 2012;Fraser, 2006;Gilquin, 2016;Müller, 2005;Polat, 2011;Romero-Trillo, 2002) being the most widely used term in the literature.…”

So How Do English Language Learners Use "So"?

“…The ELLs in Iglesias Moreno's (2001) study did not make much use of discursive well and when they did, the uses were often deemed "inappropriate." Bu (2013) also discovered that only one out of the 30 ELLs in that study used the DM and only twice. On the contrary, Müller (2004) found that ELLs had a higher frequency rate for well than EDSs.…”

“…The findings have indicated that ELLs have a different rate of frequency, greater variation among the learner group, and a limited range of functions in DM use in comparison to EDSs. Bu (2013) examined the acquisition of DMs such as like and well, among others, by Chinese ELLs, and concluded that there was variation in frequency, gender, and style among the ELLs, and that their use of the DMs' functions was limited compared to that of native speakers. Similarly, Liao (2008) inferred that the learners in that study had only obtained partial acquisition of the DMs' functions and that context was a good indicator of which DM would be used in the talk.…”

The effects of English-medium instruction on the use of textual and interpersonal pragmatic markers

“…Regarding the acquisition of PMs, research analyzing the effects of ISLA shows that learners tend to use PMs for a much narrower scope and frequency than NSs do, as they seem to struggle to correctly identify the functions of the items. For example, Bu (2013) found that while learners used the same PMs as NSs, they did not use them for the same functions as the NSs did, resulting in both a restricted range and an unnatural use of PMs. Müller (2005) reported similar findings; she found that in addition to differing patterns of PM use, learners also assigned new functions to PMs not found in the native discourse.…”