Pre-service English Teachers' Beliefs And Practice Of Using Discourse Markers In Classrooms

Discourse markers are considered as a very important part of teacher discourse,the appropriate use of which is significant for facilitating classroom teaching and promoting students' pragmatic competence.The previous research at home and abroad on pre-service English teachers' classroom discourse and English teachers' classroom discourse markers mainly includes the following aspects: pragmatic functions,characteristic analysis,high/low frequency words,existing problems and influencing factors,etc.Also,a large number of studies have shown that any teacher's teaching behavior has certain cognitive support underlying it.Teacher cognition influences his/her teaching behavior.The use of discourse markers by pre-service teachers is no exception.However,studies on teachers' cognition and behavior of the use of discourse markers in classrooms are extremely rare in the existing research literature.How do pre-service English teachers understand and use discourse markers in classroom instruction? In other words,what is the current situation of pre-service English teachers' cognition and behavior of the use of discourse markers in classrooms? What is the relationship between pre-service English teachers' cognition and behavior? Which factors influence pre-service English teacher's cognitive and behavioral relationships? This study attempts to explore the above research questions.This research is a case study on pre-service English teachers' microteaching in Z University at Chongqing.Data were collected through the methods of questionnaires,interviews,and participatory observation methods.And SPSS19.0 software was also used to statistically process the data.The research content of this paper covers two dimensions of the use of discourse markers: cognition and behavior.The results are summarized as follows:1.Pre-service English teachers' cognition of classroom discourse markers and the use: most teachers think that discourse marker is a language used by teachers toinsert,represent classroom discourse structure,and organize classroom instruction during the entire English classroom teaching.Discourse markers can exist between local sentences,and they can be also used before,during,and after sentences.They have interpersonal,structural and referential functions.The rational use of discourse markers is conducive to the organization of classroom teaching and the improvement of learners' language proficiency.However,the teachers' cognition has certain limitations with respect to the terminology,classification,and influencing factors of discourse markers,the cognition of teachers still remains in the term “discourse marker”,and they are not aware of different kinds of terms,their understanding of classification is not systematic and complete.Although they are already aware of the necessity of different classifications,they lack thinking of various types.The teachers' understanding of the influencing factors is not comprehensive,and the teachers do not attach much importance to the differences in teaching experiences and teaching concepts.Also,the teachers' different genders,teaching experiences,and undergraduate majors influence their perceptions and behaviors of their use of discourse markers in classrooms.2.Pre-service English teachers' use of discourse markers: It is found that there is a phenomenon about the excessive use of some discourse markers(OK,yes,good,next,and,etc.)by the teachers in their classrooms.They tend to use the simplest discourse markers,and it is evidenced that simple discourse markers(word types)are much more used than complex ones(phrase types).They use only a few types of discourse markers in the classrooms,and there exist the problems of little use and misuse of some discourse markers.Multi-factors,such as pre-service teachers' awareness of discourse markers,personal styles,and the differences in teaching experience influence the use of discourse markers in the classrooms.3.Pre-service English teachers' cognitive and behavioral relationships in the use of discourse markers: the teachers' cognition of discourse markers influences their actual classrrom behaviors to a certain extent.However,their cognition of discourse markers,personal styles,teaching experience,and native language transfer,as well as the lack of classroom discourse analysis course in MEd.(ELT)program offered by the university have caused their inconsistence of their cognition and behavior to some extent.It is found that there is still a certain gap between their behavior and their cognition.According to the above research findings,the author proposes some suggestionsfor pre-service English teachers,microteaching instructors and school curriculum setting so as to promote pre-service English teachers' cognitive and behavioral development of the use of discourse markers.