Developing Discourse Markers Of Chinese High School Student’s Spoken English In TBLT Settings

The second language ability and its development have always been a hot topic in the field of second language acquisition research.Existing frameworks are mostly limited to measuring the development of linguistic competence,but seldom discuss the pragmatic performance and its development.In addition,most of the research on pragmatic competence in China focuses on adult learners of higher levels such as college students,so it is necessary to include intermediate-level and even pre-intermediate-level learners who are still young in the research.This study attempts to introduce a framework which includes four measurement dimensions of discourse markers,including structural accuracy,structural complexity,functional diversity and functional accuracy,in order to explore the pragmatic development of high school learners before-during-after the 16-week(one semester)TBLT(Task-based Language Teaching)course.As the various levels of communicative competence cannot all be presented in this study,this thesis focuses on the discourse competence only.The purpose of this study is to discuss the extent to which DMs reflect the development of learners’ second language discourse ability in a semester of TBLT course in a high school in Shanghai.The specific research questions are as follows:Research question 1.How does Structural Accuracy of DMs change over this period of time and to what extent does it show L2 development in Discourse Competence?Research question 2.How does Structural Complexity of DMs change over this period of time and to what extent does it show L2 development in Discourse Competence?Research question 3.a.How does Functional Diversity of DMs change over this period of time and to what extent does it show L2 development in Discourse Competence? b.Do the four types of DMs change consistently or not?Research question 4.How does Functional Accuracy of DMs change over this period of time and to what extent does it show L2 development in Discourse Competence?This research data comes from a research project of a teacher-education university in an ordinary high school in Shanghai,which aims to explore the influence of repetitive task-based reading on learners’ second language development.In this study,32 students who participated in the project are selected as research subjects.In the 16-week long task-based reading course,students have taken three oral tests,which are pre-test,mid-test and post-test.In this study,SPSS 23.0 software is used to perform paired-samples T test to compare the data of pre-and post-test,in order to analyze the pragmatic development of learners before and after the TBLT course.Besides,SPSS 23.0 software is also used to perform one-way ANOVA and nonparametric rank sum test to analyze the data of all of these three tests,in order to describe the development and change of learners’ pragmatic competence in the course.The research results are as follows:1.The indicators reflecting the structural accuracy of DMs increase significantly in pretest and post-test,which shows that learners’ L2 discourse competence has developed in using more structurally-accurate DMs.The change of this index is significant in both pre-mid period and mid-post period,but the change in pre-mid period is greater than that in mid-post period,which indicates that learners’ discourse competence in this aspect is developing relatively faster at first stage of this 16-week TBLT course.2.The indicators reflecting the structural complexity of DMs increase significantly in pretest and post-test,which shows that learners’ L2 discourse competence has developed in using more complex DMs.In this group of indicators,the index reflecting the number of DMs contained in each clause changes more in the pre-mid period than in the mid-post period,while the index reflecting the proportion of two-word and longer-word DMs changes more in the second period of time.3.The indicators reflecting the functional diversity of DMs have changed significantly before and after the course.Among the four types of DMs,the proportion of IPDMs(interpersonal discourse markers),RFDMs(referential discourse markers)and STDMs(structural discourse markers)has increased significantly,indicating that learners’ L2 discourse competence has developed in using more types of DMs.Among the four types of DMs,the proportion of IPDM increased significantly in the late period,the proportion of STDM increased significantly in the early course,and the proportion of CGDM decreased significantly in both the early and late course.4.The indicators reflecting the functional accuracy of DMs increased significantly in pretest and post-test,which shows that learners’ L2 discourse competence has developed in using more functional-accurate DMs.The change of this index is significant only in the pre-mid period,which shows that learners’ discourse competence in this aspect shows a faster developing trend at first stage of the 16-week TBLT course.This thesis also makes possible explanations for the changes of discourse markers in this study from the aspects of classroom factors and test factors,and finally discusses the enlightenment and possible limitations of this study,trying to provide directions for future research.