An Analysis On The Use Of Discourse Markers In High School Students’ English Narrative Writings

Writing is an indispensable link in English teaching and learning in senior highschools. In the writing process, the relationship between sentences or paragraphs can bepresented clearly by using discourse markers, which help readers to understand the author’sintention more efficiently. The use of discourse markers in English writings has attractedmany English teachers’ attention. This thesis aims at the use of discourse markers used innarrative writings written by the senior high school English learners. The study attempts toanswer the following two research questions:1. What are the characteristics of the discourse markers that are frequently used inChinese high school students’ English narrative writings?2. What are the characteristics of the misused or inappropriately used discoursemarkers in the high school students’ narrative writings? What are the possiblereasons of the inappropriate use?In this research, the author required193students from three grades to write acomposition separately according to three topics, and chose30pieces in each graderandomly to make data analysis. Through quantitative analysis, the findings of thecharacteristics of the frequently used DMs are presented as follows:(1) Among different types of discourse markers, temporal DMs are the mostfrequently used, following closely with the additive DMs. Contrastive DMs andcausal DMs have roughly the same frequency of appearance.(2) When it comes to the individual DM, additive DM and is the most frequently used;the next is temporal DM and then; causal DM because is in the third place.(3) The frequently used DMs by the high school students have the characteristics ofoversimplification and lacking in diversity.(4) The excessive use of additive DM and, inferential DM so and filler DM I thinkreveals the students’ colloquial manner in writings.By means of qualitative analysis, the characteristics of the inappropriately used DMsare as listed below: (1) Additive DM and is used excessively, and also is misplaced in the sentence.(2) Temporal DM then/and then is used for bonding unrelated sentences.(3) Causal DM because is used excessively to lead subordinate clause generating lotsof sentence fragments.(4) Certain DMs such as but, however and so are used to create spurious relationshipbetween sentences or paragraphsIn allusion to the inappropriately used DMs in narrative writings, possible causes arediscussed in the light of interlingual errors and intralingual errors, in other words, L1transferand faulty or partial learning of the target language. By virtue of results of the research, theauthor proposed some suggestions for English writing teaching in high schools. Englishteachers should be familiar with the frequently used DMs in various genres and the commonerrors made by the students. In the teaching process, the variety of DMs should be reinforced.Lay stress on the discrepancies of DMs used in Chinese and English and used in spoken andwritten language in order to guide students to use DMs correctly and improve the students’writing ability.