The Use Of Discourse Markers By Chinese Non-English Majors In English Writing

Discourse markers (DMs) are one of the common language phenomena in daily communication. Previous studies indicate that further comprehending its functions is helpful for people to communicate more successfully with each other. This thesis is based on Coherence Theory and Interlanguage Theory. Its main purpose is to explore the use of DMs by non-English majors in their English writings by applying the corpus-based Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis method. In present study, DMs retrieved from sub-corpus of Chinese English Learners Corpus (CLEC St3) and sub-corpus of English native language corpus (LUCY Youngadult) were the subjects of the thesis. To answer the above questions, the author applied contrastive analysis to study the use of DMs in their English writings between Chinese non-English majors and the U.K. college students.The research procedures are as follows: First of all, 67 DMs were retrieved with corpora software Antconcoc 4.3.1 to obtain their frequency based on classification. Then, 80 pieces of samples were chosen randomly from CLEC St3, with 20 pieces at each proficiency(Level A,B,C,D), to measure the correlation between the use of DMs and writing quality of Chinese college EFL learners with SPSS 15.0. Later on, 130 pieces of good essays and 130 poor essays were chosen, and the frequency of DMs was obtained from them to compare with each other finding out the similarities and differences of the use of DMs by the different proficiency in their English writings. At last, the comparative analysis between NS and Chinese college learners of different proficiency ( LPL and HPL )was made by applying Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis.The main findings are as follows: There was a significant positive correlation between the use of DMs and writing quality. Comparative study among Chinese college students of different proficiency in the use of DMs showed that learners of Level A and Level D use less frequency of DMs than learners of level B and Level C, appearing the trend (Level B>Level C >Level A>Level D). With language learners'proficiency increasing in written English, the category of DMs used in their writings increased correspondingly. Comparative study between Chinese college students and U.K. college students in the use of DMs showed that: On the whole, the research revealed that there was no significant difference in the frequency of DMs used in the essays between Chinese college English learners (both HPL and LPL) and U.K. college students. To be specific, LPL overused causal exemplifying, temporal, qualificatory and fillers with meaning DMs, while they used less additive, contrastive, concessive and selective DMs.Based on these findings, conclusions are made as following: 1) Proper use of DMs is helpful for improving the quality of writing; 2) HPL have strong awareness of genre, and less negative transfer of mother-tongue arise; 3) Compared with U.K. college students, LPL'abuse, omission and misuse of some of DMs, are related to negative transfer, fossilization, teaching strategies, lack of vocabulary, applying writing patterns and poor awareness of genre. To some extent, this reflects the differences between NS and Chinese college students in the coherent use of DMs .The present study will guide Chinese college students use DMs on purpose in English writing and help learners of interlanguage move into the target language proficiency as soon as possible.