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Discourse marker acquisition and out-of-school activities: evidence from EFL writing
Abstract
The present paper attempts to investigate what out-of-school activities might positively affect the acquisition of discourse markers (DMs) which seems to be one of the most demanding areas for EFL learners. Two equal size groups of Croatian primary and secondary school learners (N = 200) completed a writing test in English and a questionnaire aimed at establishing the degree to which the respondents were exposed to out-of-school activities. The results reveal that the out-of-school activity which EFL learners might best benefit from is reading authentic English literature. It is followed by watching English TV programs and surfing English websites. The findings of the study reflect a need for enhancing EFL learners´ awareness of the benefits and possibilities for out-of-school activities by incorporating tasks and teaching materials that bring the out-of-school activities into EFL classrooms.
... Two studies (Vickov 2015;Gilquin 2016) have examined DM use and informal second language learning. Vickov (2015) investigated the written DM frequency of 200 Croatian EFL learners in primary and secondary schools, and three out-of-school activities: surfing English websites, watching English TV, and reading English literature. ...
... Two studies (Vickov 2015;Gilquin 2016) have examined DM use and informal second language learning. Vickov (2015) investigated the written DM frequency of 200 Croatian EFL learners in primary and secondary schools, and three out-of-school activities: surfing English websites, watching English TV, and reading English literature. Data on DM frequency were collected through a written test (formal letter to a magazine editor). ...
... Furthermore, the researcher provided only a limited scope of participants' ISLL, especially since the three activities studied were of a receptive nature whereas the language examined involved production. Vickov's (2015) focus on written DM use still leaves the question regarding the effect of ISLL on spoken DM use unanswered. ...
... @BULLET At all, surprisingly few studies had analyzed the relation between the EFL learners' L2 contact outside the classroom and their foreign language proficiency or achievement outcomes. Two studies could substantiate a positive relationship between secondary learners' exposition to extracurricular L2 sources with their English listening and writing competence, respectively (Vez, Piñeiro & Rodríguez, 2013; Vickov, 2015). The results from two other studies with adult samples could not demonstrate any substantial achievement differences depending on the frequency of extracurricular language activities (Barbee, 2013; Spada, 1986). ...
In the EFL context, the learners' extracurricular contact with the L2 is considered both an important goal and a substantial means to develop and optimize their foreign language acquisition. From a cognitive-motivational perspective the extent and intensity to communicate in a foreign language outside the EFL classroom will not only depend on the learners' language skills – but will also be strongly affected by their related self-beliefs. In particular, their perceptions of own competencies as well as their apprehension concerning the use of English language should decisively regulate their actual willingness to communicate in the L2. Beside pertinent listening, pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar competencies, in particular, the learners' oral narrative competencies and their related self-beliefs, respectively, should claim a central role in determining their L2 contact. However, as previous EFL research could incrementally differentiate L2 competence beliefs and anxieties into specific subcomponents (such as speaking, reading, or writing beliefs) and could clearly demonstrate the relationships of these subcomponents with the foreign language learners' achievement outcomes or proficiency levels – the issue of oral narrative competence beliefs and anxieties seems to be barely analyzed. Moreover, little is known about their contribution to explain interindividually existing differences in EFL learners' extracurricular L2 contact. Therefore, the present study aims at clarifying these relationships. In a sample of N = 256 German ninth-graders from 9 inner-city grammar schools the relations between their related competence beliefs, anxiety, teacher ratings of their relevant L2 skills, and their extracurricular L2 contact were analyzed. For concurrent validation, measures of their L1 self-concept as well as teacher ratings of their L1 skills were additionally included. Using structural equation modeling method the results could show the learners' L2 contact being directly explained by their self-perceptions of oral narrative competencies, which appeared to be directly affected by their anxiety concerning oral narrative situations. The anxiety variable, in turn, could be directly predicted by the teacher rating of learners' speaking skills. Hence, the L2 speaking skills had no direct impact on the learners' L2 contact, but were sequentially mediated by their oral narrative self-beliefs and their apprehension or fear of failure concerning oral narrative situations. Furthermore, multiple group comparison could demonstrate these relationships among variables to be invariant across gender. Taken altogether, the present findings stress the need for conceptually and methodologically more complex research designs to intensely unravel the developmental pathways and educational effects of EFL learners' extracurricular L2 activities.
One of the most lively and contentious issues in contemporary linguistic theory concerns the elusive boundary between semantics and pragmatics, and Professor Laurence R. Horn of Yale University has been at the center of that debate ever since his groundbreaking 1972 UCLA dissertation. This volume in honor of Horn brings together the best of current work at the semantics/pragmatics boundary from a neo-Gricean perspective. Featuring the contributions of 22 leading researchers, it includes papers on implicature (Kent Bach), inference (Betty Birner), presupposition (Barbara Abbott), lexical semantics (Georgia Green, Sally McConnell-Ginet, Steve Kleinedler & Randall Eggert), negation (Pauline Jacobson, Frederick Newmeyer, Scott Schwenter), polarity (Donka Farkas, Anastasia Giannakidou, Michael Israel), implicit variables (Greg Carlson & Gianluca Storto), definiteness (Barbara Partee), reference (Ellen Prince, Andrew Kehler & Gregory Ward), and logic (Jerrold Sadock, Francis Jeffry Pelletier & Andrew Hartline). These original papers represent not only a fitting homage to Larry Horn, but also an important contribution to semantic and pragmatic theory.
The purpose of this study is to explore how five Iranian postgraduate students view discourse markers (DMs) and if there is any distinction between what is expressed in the interview and their writing samples. A qualitative method is being employed in the study. Purposive sampling is conducted in selecting the students. The findings indicate that all informants are fully aware of applying DMs in their writing but they do not have sufficient knowledge for the proper use and choosing appropriate ones. The findings are very specific and never mentioned in the previous research studies. However, more research needs to be undertaken in order to address the diversity of students with a bigger sample and various methodology.
Discourse markers are expressions such as now, well, so, however, and then, which signal a sequential relationship between the current basic message and the previous discourse. The purpose of the present paper is to propose that discourse markers be considered a well-defined pragmatic category within the grammar of a language.A framework for sentence meaning is presented within which discourse markers are analyzed as a class of commentary pragmatic markers. The claim that marker meaning is that of the expression when used as part of sentence content (e.g., as an adverbial) is rejected, and a minimal pragmatic core meaning for each discourse marker is proposed. Finally, discourse markers are distinguished from other types of commentary markers, from vocatives, interjections, and from expressions such as oh, y'know, I mean, and because, often treated as a part of this group.
Regarding writing cohesion and coherence, research has so far focused mostly on linking devices, such as conjunctions and linking adverbials (also called connectors). There has not been much research on lexical cohesion in writing. This article discusses the role that lexical items play in the cohesion and coherence of an article and explains, with concrete examples, how to create lexical ties in enhancing writing cohesion and coherence.
This paper is an attempt to clarify the status of discourse markers. These lexical expressions have been studied under various labels, including discourse markers, discourse connectives, discourse operators, pragmatic connectives, sentence connectives, and cue phrases. Although most researchers agree that they are expressions which relate discourse segments, there is no agreement on how they are to be defined or how they function.After reviewing prior theoretical research, I define discourse markers as a class of lexical expressions drawn primarily from the syntactic classes of conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. With certain exceptions, they signal a relationship between the interpretation of the segment they introduce, S2, and the prior segment, S1. They have a core meaning, which is procedural, not conceptual, and their more specific interpretation is ‘negotiated’ by the context, both linguistic and conceptual. There are two types: those that relate the explicit interpretation conveyed by S2 with some aspect associated with the segment, S1; and those that relate the topic of S2 to that of S1. I conclude by presenting what appears to be the major classes according to their function.
The aim of this study was to investigate discourse markers in descriptive compositions of 90 Iranian students who were selected from two universities. Without any instruction, they were given a topic to write a descriptive composition per week for 8 weeks. 598 compositions were collected, and they were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by three raters following Fraser's (1999) taxonomy of Discourse Markers. Findings showed that students employed discourse markers with different degrees of occurrence. Elaborative markers were the most frequently used, followed by inferential, contrastive, causative, and topic relating markers. There was a direct and positive relationship between the quality of the compositions and the number of well-functioned discourse markers. Results also revealed statistically significant differences between the use of discourse markers and composition quality in the groups. Graduate students used more discourse markers, and this led to more cohesive texts.
While discourse markers have been examined in some detail, little is known about their usage by non-native speakers. This book provides valuable insights into the functions of four discourse markers ( so, well, you know and like ) in native and non-native English discourse, adding to both discourse marker literature and to studies in the pragmatics of learner language. It presents a thorough analysis on the basis of a substantial parallel corpus of spoken language. In this corpus, American students who are native speakers of English and German non-native speakers of English retell and discuss a silent movie. Each of the main chapters of the book is dedicated to one discourse marker, giving a detailed analysis of the functions this discourse marker fulfills in the corpus and a quantitative comparison between the two speaker groups. The book also develops a two-level model of discourse marker functions comprising a textual and an interactional level.
There are few aspects of language which are more problematic than its discourse particles. The present study of discourse particles draws upon data from the London-Lund Corpus to show how the methods and tools of corpora can sharpen their description. The first part of the book provides a picture of the state of the art in discourse particle studies and introduces the theory and methodology for the analysis in the second part of the book. Discourse particles are analysed as elements which have been grammaticalised and as a result have certain properties and uses. The importance of linguistic and contextual cues such as text type, position in the discourse, prosody and collocation for analysing discourse particles is illustrated. The following chapters deal with specific discourse particles (now, oh, just, sort of, and that sort of thing, actually) on the basis of their empirical analysis in the London-Lund Corpus. Examples and extended extracts from many different text types are provided to illustrate what discourse particles are doing in discourse.
The invasion of the English language in the Nordic countries has increased rapidly. A wealth of Anglo-American loan words has been adapted into the languages spoken in the Nordic region and English is used widely. This presentation is part of a more extensive study in which I am first going to study and describe the adaptation of English as a lingua franca in the Nordic countries and, secondly, the adaptation of English words and structures into the Finnish language from the view-points of pragmatics, semantics, morphology and phonology. In Paatola (2002) I discuss the English spoken by Finnish and Swedish businessmen and -women from the point of view of interdiscourse system communication and interlanguage pragmatics in a Nordic company which uses English as the medium of communication. More specifically, I look at the use and the function of the turn-initial particle but. As a reference point, I describe the use and the functions of Finnish mutta 'but', Swedish men 'but' and English but and I compare their use to the use of but in the English spoken by Finnish and Swedish businessmen and -women (i.e. in Nordic English). The data consist of a video-and audio-taped meeting of six members of a Finnish-Swedish company that I transcribed as part of a project called Suomea, ruotsia vai englantia? Sisäinen viestintä äskettäin fuusioituneissa pohjoismaisissa yrityksissä ('Finnish, Swedish or English? Internal communication in recently merged Nordic companies') at the Helsinki School of Economics (HSE) using the conventions of conversation analysis (CA). Two issues are considered relevant as regards the data. First, English is a lingua franca for the speakers as it is not the native language of any of them. Secondly, the setting is a voluntary goal-directed institutional and professional meeting. There are 323 instances of but in the Nordic English (NE) data of which 167 are analysed as turn-initial. In total, 98 of the 167 instances are identified as absolute turn-initial buts (i.e. they are the first word of the utterance), and 69 as agreement marker + but combinations (e.g. yeah but, no but). Together, the groups represent nearly 52% of all buts in the data. As regards the functions of but, there are important differences in its use if the NE speakers and native English speakers (in the London-Lund Corpus) are compared. My analysis shows that approximately half of the utterances that follow but or agreement marker + but combinations are countering in NE (see Altenberg 1986). However, absolute turn-initial countering is characterised by suggestions, clarifications and relevance-challenging rather than by counter-arguments. This suggests that the function of but in NE is less contrastive than in the English of native speakers. Slightly more than 20% of turn-initial buts introduce topic shifts which are characterised by only very small changes; many times it means staying on the same overall topic. In some cases but precedes an utterance that sums up previous statements or directs the conversation back to a prior topic. There are also a few instances in which but 'dangles' in the air (see Altenberg 1986), the utterance consisting of nothing more than but or an agreement marker + but combination (that might be followed by yet another agreement marker, e.g. yeah but yeah). I show that the functions of turn-initial but in NE should rather be described on a continuum than as separate categories. The functional load of but seems to be rather high, because it has to cover countering, topic shift, topic resumption, and unfinished contrasts; it has to sum up arguments and sub-topics; and it has to catch the attention of the listeners. From another perspective, the pragmatic particles in the NE data seem to reflect parallel overuse and underuse of individual particles in comparison to the English spoken by native speakers. Some of the features of the NE data can be explained by transfer from the speakers' native languages into their English. In addition, there are features in the speakers' interlanguages that cannot be explained by the rules of English, Finnish or Swedish. The Finns and Swedes favour simplified forms of politeness in debating and presenting their opinions in English. In this respect, the English they use is similar to international business English (see Bartlett and Johnson 1997). The preference of but in turn-initial position and the symmetrical relationship and solidarity among the NE speakers visible in their face-to-face interaction could also reflect the efficiency and directness that are supposed to characterise western business culture and professional interaction.
This paper investigates the use of the discourse marker by German EFL speakers as compared to its use by American native speakers (NS). The analysis is based on 70 conversations in which pairs of university students retold and discussed a short silent movie they had been shown. All instances of in these conversations were categorised according to the function assumed in the interaction. Of the twelve functions found in the data, nine were used more by the EFL than by the native speakers. The EFL speakers also used more frequently than native speakers did in comparison to the discourse marker , especially in comparable functions of the two markers. Several possible explanations for these results are discussed in the paper; the most likely ones are the respective frequencies of and in German textbooks of English and an overuse of in an attempt to avoid the German-sounding .
The aim of the article is to make a contribution to the description of the meaning and functions of well by looking at its translations into Swedish and Dutch. In order to study well cross-linguistically we have used electronic translation corpora. Our account of well is based on Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia as it is integrated within the systems of modality and evidentiality (White 1999, 2000). A comparison is made with earlier proposals by Carlson (1984), Bolinger (1989), Jucker (1993), Smith and Jucker (2000), and Schourup (2001). Both in Swedish and in Dutch we found a wide range of translations, testifying to the uses of well as a connective and as an interpersonal marker. We want to claim that these different uses can be explained from the general heteroglossic function that well fulfils. The translations also show that positive appraisal is still part of the meaning of well, though in some cases this meaning aspect is more salient than in others.
This study investigated the classroom interaction and in-home, bilingual interviews of 17 adult learners of English with no previous formal English language instruction in order to find the frequency of use and some functions of forms of language which are not explicitly taught: the discourse markers well, you know, and like. Previous findings in this area are based most often on data from more advanced language learners and do not present a clear picture of which learners use these markers more often or why. Results of the current study show that this set of learners uses few discourse markers. A review of the focal students’ background information (including language use patterns outside the classroom) suggests that the students who use more discourse markers may be the students who are more acculturated to the US. This suggests that the students who comprise the population at the data collection site, in general, remain, to some degree, isolated from English language culture in the US.
The present article describes the phenomenon of “Pragmatic Fossilization” as one of the main problems that non-native speakers of English face in their learning process. The article discusses its possible origins, its features, and its implications in the evolution of a second language. Based on a corpus-driven analysis of discourse markers, the paper focuses on the evolution of these pragmatic elements in native and non-native speakers of English—children and adults. The analysis will show the difference in the use of these elements between both groups of speakers, with the possible pragmatic failures that may arise in communication. The detailed study of this phenomenon, supported by statistical tests, proves the role of “Pragmatic Fossilization” as an element to consider in second language learning and teaching.
In Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory, the discourse marker well can be seen as a signpost which constrains the interpretation process and the concomitant background selection. It signifies that the most immediately accessible context is not the most relevant one for the interpretation of the impending utterance. This analysis covers four more or less distinct uses of well: (1) as a marker of insufficiency; (2) as a face-threat mitigator; (3) as a frame; and (4) as a delay device. Relevance theory, which is a general theory of human communication based on cognitive principles, offers a unified explanation across a broad range of examples.
A text is composed of two parts: propositional content and metadiscourse features. Metadiscourse features are those facets of a text which make the organization of the text explicit, provide information about the writer's attitude toward the text content, and engage the reader in the interaction. In this study, we analyze the metadiscourse in persuasive essays written by English as a second language (ESL) university students. Half of the essays received good ratings and half received poor ratings. Differences between the two sets were found in the number of words, number of T-units, and density of metadiscourse features. When features were analyzed as a proportion of number of T-units, differences were found in all categories. Furthermore, the good essays showed a greater variety of metadiscourse features within each category than the poor essays. It is proposed that skilled writers have an awareness of the needs of their readers and control the strategies for making their texts more considerate and accessible to the reader. Poor writers, on the other hand, are not able to generate considerate texts.
This study examines and compares the production of discourse markers by native speakers and learners of English based on a
pedagogic sub-corpus from CANCODE, a corpus of spoken British English, and a corpus of interactive classroom discourse of
secondary pupils in Hong Kong. The results indicate that in both groups discourse markers serve as useful interactional manoeuvres
to structure and organize speech on interpersonal, referential, structural, and cognitive levels. The Hong Kong learners are
found to display a liberal use of referentially functional discourse markers (and, but, because, OK, so, etc.) but a relatively
restricted use of other markers (yeah, really, say, sort of, I see, you see, well, right, actually, cos, you know, etc.).
Native speakers are found to use discourse markers for a wider variety of pragmatic functions and the study therefore also
discusses some possible pedagogical implications involved in preparing learners to become more interactionally competent speakers.
This paper was written as part of the project “English in Croatia” and deals with the place of English listening comprehension in total competence. It is shown that in primary school girls are better at this component than boys, whereas in secondary school the sex of pupils makes no difference in this respect. The intensity of English - learning in primary school is related to achievement in listening comprehension, but is not decisive. In secondary school sample no correlation has been found between the intensity of learning and achievement in this component of the test. Length of learning has also been found to be nonsignifi cantly related with achievement in listening comprehension. City pupils turn out to be more successful than pupils from small towns in this component of the test. In her discussion of results the author puts special emphasis on the role of exposure to English in out-of-school everyday life.
Developing writing skills is an important and complex part of language learning. Literatureon writing specifies in general terms that discourse markers constitute an indispensablecomponent of writing quality. This study aimed at identifying the discourse marker usage ofTurkish EFL learners. The study was conducted on 76 second grade students of Konya SelçukUniversity, Education Faculty, English Language Teaching Department. Data were collectedfrom the students’ papers, and the papers were evaluated in terms of number of sentences used,the number of discourse markers used, and the variety of the discourse markers preferred in awrite five-paragraph essay. Analysis of the papers suggests guiding results for further research ondeveloping writing quality.
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