Discourse Markers And EFLT In Senior High Schools

This paper seeks to find a way of incorporating discourse markers in our dailyreading and writing instructions from a perspective of discourse. It has been aimed tobetter the student's reading and writing competence without losing sight of thestudent's overall language performance. The study has been prompted by the factthat a majority of learners of English in senior high schools have reading and writingdifficulties in lecture situations. Based on a sample of materials obtained from 30subjects over a period of 8 weeks, this paper recorded actual lecture situations,analyzed data collected during the research, and discussed and presented theimplications of discourse markers for the teaching pedagogy.This paper is divided into 4 chapters with an introduction to the current teachingenvironment. At the present educational environment there are irreconcilableconflicts between the teacher, the students, the coursebook and the teachingapproach, as great emphasis is put on grammar---the bits and pieces of discourse,while discourse itself is not properly treated as important. Thus a perspective ofdiscourse is both obligatory and essential if we attempt to resolve the problem and toimprove the student's overall discourse competence. It is for this that the teachingof discourse becomes the focus of this paper.Chapter 1 of this paper presents a brief historical review over the past researchwork done on discourse markers and the development of the theory. In thelinguistic circle, there is a proliferation of literatures on the description of discoursemarkers, centering especially on their use in speech. Though scholars like MichaelMcCarthy made valuable suggestions as to how to apply discourse markers for classuse, on the whole there was a lack of available books in China. Very few ideasfrom this theory appear to have been adopted in the classroom application. We needmore attention and research work on the pragmatic level.Chapter 2 presents descriptive research that is designed to identify and classifydiscourse markers. It sets up the theoretical bases for later chapters, focusingparticularly on two authors whose works were of the greatest relevance to the theoryas well as to our teaching practice: M.A.K Halliday and Christine Nuttall. Theirrelevance to teaching is also evaluated and commented. This chapter also presentsthe classification and functions of discourse markers. As our utmost goal is to putthe theory into practice ---to really put discourse markers to use in the EFLclassroom, we make necessary adaptations and assessments of these devices for theconvenience of manageability.Chapter 3 describes an experiment implemented in the senior high school. Thedata collection procedures are reviewed, including observations, a questionnaire andquantitative data as well. The quantitative research is represented by scores obtainedbefore and after the experiment, while the qualitative data involves a questionnaireand a student's log of performance. The result of the experiment is properly analyzed,and various factors which contribute to and help explain the result of the experimentare considered. The area which is of the greatest interest to language teachers iselaborated on and the patterns that students display in their performance are recordedand categorized. It was discovered from the experiment that students couldefficiently better their discourse competence by focusing on discourse markers.Another discovery is that students at different levels displayed common features aswell as discrepancies. However, overuse, misuse and insufficient use of discoursemarkers are common among students during the process of their learning. Differentfactors influence the way students use discourse markers, among which culturedifference, current educational system and practices and individual differences aremost pertinent.In Chapter 4 we highlight and describe in detail the studies we have performedin English as a Foreign Language Area, illustrating the language use patternscharacteristic of our research background. Suggestions on the application ofdiscourse markers in foreign language teaching environment are produced, based onthe result and conclusion drawn from the previous chapters. It is suggested that(1)teaching should be goal-guided instead of test-centered;(2)the teaching of writingmust be combined with reading;(3)there should be varieties in the forms of activities.At the end of the passage, it is pointed out that the application of discourse markersis not a cure for all problems, nor the only means to focus on discourse. Furtherempirical research is most needed at the practical level.In general, we draw on the knowledge of discourse markers, seeking to find anapplicable way to improve the student's competence in both reading and writing.We attempt to achieve this from a discourse angle, focusing on language in use.We have also discussed the pros and cons of such an approach in foreign languageteaching. We finally summarize what we have learnt from our research and set thefuture direction for work on applying discourse markers in senior high schoolresearch and practice.