A Study On Discourse Markers In College English Listening Teaching From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As a common language phenomenon,discourse markers are widely used in spoken and written language.With the emergence and development of pragmatics,the understanding of discourse has also attracted people's attention,and many linguists have been working on the pragmatic study of discourse markers since the 1970s.In the 1980s,Sperber and Wilson(1986)proposed the definition of relevance theory,and unfolded a new perspective for relevant researches about discourse markers.This research,guided by the relevance theory,explores the guiding role of discourse markers on college English listening teaching.According to the classification of Blakemore(1992)and Chen Xinren(2002,2013),the researcher classifies the discourse markers that appear in CET-4 and simulation tests in the past few years based on three different kinds of listening materials(news reports,long conversations,and passages).Besides,questionnaire and one semester's experimental teaching including pre-test and post-test are specifically conducted to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the differences in listening habits and listening skills among non-English major students?Do they know enough about discourse markers?(2)What are the features of occurrence frequency and distribution of three different categories of discourse markers in three different kinds of listening materials?(3)What are the effects and implications of discourse markers for college English listening teaching based on relevance theory?In this study,the researcher randomly selects non-English major sophomores from two natural classes of Shenyang Normal University,with 41 students in one class as EC and 42 students in the other class as CC to conduct one semester's experimental teaching.The experimental results indicate that:(1)Students do present differences about listening habits,listening strategies,and discourse markers.Some students have their own listening habits but they cannot do listening exercises consciously.(2)In three different kinds of listening materials,there are significant differences about the occurrence frequency and distribution of discourse markers.The frequency of occurrence of discourse markers is more highly in long conversations and passages.The categories are mostly adversative and additive.The frequency of occurrence of discourse markers is relatively low in news reports,and the category is geared to listing.(3)Discourse markers play a positive role in college English listening teaching.Through one semester's classroom teaching,the teacher consciously presents relevant knowledge of discourse markers and guides students to do practices with knowledge of discourse markers.By comparing the results of the pre-test and the post-test,researcher comes to a conclusion that utilizing discourse markers into college English listening teaching can improve students' English listening competence.