A Corpus-based Study On Discourse Markers In The Writings Of Students Of English Majors

Consisted of words and structures with some specific functions in human interactions,discourse markers become a common linguistic phenomenon in both conversations and writings.Discourse markers have been a significant discussion topic of discourse analysis and pragmatic research.This research analyzes the discourse markers used in the argumentative writings of the learners of English majors,compares the results with the English native speakers’,and probes into the differences in the use of discourse markers by learners of Chinese English majors at different proficiency levels.This study took a mixed research method of quantitative research and qualitative research.First of all,based on the author’s reclassification and the data from the three corpora,CEM 4,CEM 8 and Corpus of Editorials in the English Periodicals,the frequencies of discourse markers and their positions in sentences are retrieved.Then the data concerning type,frequency and the position of discourse markers from the two learners’ corpora will be compared with the data of native speakers’ corpus respectively,and the results are analyzed in a statistical way with the assistance of Microsoft Excel and SPSS 13.0.The data from the two learners’ corpora and native speakers’ corpus are furthered compared and analyzed in the statistical way.The results of comparative analyses suggest that the learners of Chinese English majors of basic level,compared with native speakers,overuse exemplifying,sequential,emphatic,causal,summative and qualificatory discourse markers,and underuse additive,selective,contrastive and temporal discourse markers.A few of the discourse markers that most frequently used by the learners of Chinese English majors are most frequently used by native speakers as well.But discourse markers "if’,"when","also","because","still" are overused by them.In addition,the positions of some discourse markers in the sentences are not comprehensively mastered,and some of them are misused.While compared with English native speakers,the learners of Chinese English majors of advanced level overused additive,exemplifying,repetive,sequential,emphatic,causal,summative and qualificatory discourse markers.Some discourse markers are most frequently used by both learners and native speakers,but discourse markers "or","if’,"also","after" and "because"are overused by learners.Positions of discourse markers in the sentences are not appropriately mastered,and some discourse markers are misused.Compared with the data between learners of basic level and learners of advanced level,the data of the latter seem to be more close to that of native speakers,which suggests that further learning does benefit to the use of discourse markers to some extent.The fossilization,however,exists in Chinese English majors’ use of discourse markers.There are some limitations in this study.There might be some statistical mistakes,and the data resource,the examination,may affect the results.This research,to some extent,provides some pedagogical implication.A decreasing of the attention to writing patterns,and an increasing of the richness and input of English learning materials,will offer some assistance to the acquisition and application of discourse markers in the argumentative writing.