A Study on College English Teachers’ Use of discourse Markers

Abstract: The paper intends to explore the use of Discourse Markers (DMs) by college English teachers in the classroom and to achieve an understanding of the range of functions that those discourse markers perform.

Key words: Discourse Markers (DMs);Teacher Talk;Pragmatic Function

中图分类号:H319 文献标识码: A文章编号:1672-1578(2009)11-0025-02

1 Introduction

Discourse markers can be defined as those natural language expressions whose primary function is to facilitate the process of interpreting the coherence relations between a particular unit of discourse and other surround units and aspects of the communicative situation. Research on discourse markers mainly focuses on the discourse markers in written text. Research on the discourse markers used in the classroom by Chinese College English teachers has been relatively neglected. There is very little published literature concerning it. So the writer starts a project on the analysis of Chinese English teachers classroom discourse markers. The goal of the project is to find out the most frequently used discourse markers and the main functions they perform.

2 Data Collection and Analysis

5 subjects are selected randomly, all of whom are teachers who teach postgraduate courses. Their lectures are recorded without informing them beforehand, so as to avoid emotive factors and keep the naturalness of their lecture and make the data more reliable.

After analyzing the corpus, I find that the most frequently used discourse markers are ok, right, yeah and so, and the other frequently used discourse markers are yes, I mean, you see, well, you know, all right, etc. Different subjects have their favorite discourse markers respectively. For example, subject A use right for 42 times, yeah for 35 times, so for 24 times and you see for 21 times. Subject B uses so for as many as 76 times, ok for 42 times, and you see for 17 times. Subject C uses ok for 85 times, and right for 52 times. Subject D uses ok for 63 times. Subject E uses the least discourse markers compared with the other 4 subjects. He only uses right 5 times and you see twice. One of the reasons may be that his lecture is very much text-oriented.

3 The Main Functions of DMs

Discourse markers have quite a number of different functions, but in this specific context in the classroom, those discourse markers are restricted to the following main functions: evaluating markers, boundary markers, back channeling device, repair marker and delay device.

3.1 Evaluating markers

One of the most important roles of a teacher plays in the classroom is that of an evaluator. Being the authority in the class, the teacher is able to use discourse markers to evaluate on the students contributions and performances and to convey confirmation. The most frequently used discourse markers here are right, ok, yes. Sometimes teachers may also use thats right, you are right, good and very good to evaluate on the students performances. The teachers evaluation is very important. If the evaluation is withheld after students answer to the teachers question, students are likely to suspect that something is wrong and that they have not given the correct answer or they have not given the answer the teacher wants.

3.2 Boundary markers

Discourse markers can be used as boundary markers to signal transitions at different organizational levels of classroom discourse. Research on the structure of classroom discourse suggests that each class meeting is composed of events which can be either small-group or whole-group activities. Each event in turn contains internal instructional phases composed of interactional sequences that are characterized by the tripartite structure. Sinclair and Coulthard call this tripartite an exchange. The typical exchange in the classroom consists of a question, an answer and a comment, and each of the parts are given the name move. Sinclair and Coulthard call the first move in each exchange an opening move, the second an answering move and the third a follow up move. (McCharthy, 2002) Now they are often called initiation, response and follow-up respectively. In the classroom, most of the time teachers act as an initiator. They ask student questions and students give corresponding response to the teachers questions and the teacher comments on the students response. If the students answers are correct, the teacher will use discourse markers ok, right or yes, etc., which marks the end of the exchange.

3.3 Back-channeling device

Teachers often use discourse markers like yeah and ok to act as a back-channeling device to indicate that he or she is still listening. In this context, it does not necessarily mean that the teacher is going to take the turn and it does not necessarily mark agreement. Here what the teacher really means is that “Im listening to you. You can continue your topic.” Here in my corpus, one of the teachers tends to use ok when she is listening to the students. Some of the oks may mean agreement, but most of them act as back-channeling device. For instance, the teacher may sometimes follow “Do you really mean that…?” or “But I think...” after ok, which means she does not agree with or partly disagree with what the student says.

3.4 Repair markers

Repair markers are most frequently applied to conversations in general. Repair is a broadly defined term that refers to the sequence of talk beginning with the initial indication of trouble and ending with resolution. Self-initiation of repair occurs when the producer of the talk containing the trouble source is also the person who indicates that trouble is being experienced. Since the teachers are the dominant speakers in the class I recorded, most of the time, teachers will use self-initiation repair. Repair initiation techniques found in the data consists of pauses, cut-offs, sound stretches, rising intonation given to a lexical item, and other non-lexical items, such as ah and um, exclamations such as wait, thats not right, I mean, tended to be self-orienting in nature. Whereas requests for help (e. g. “whats the word for…”) tended to be used to elicit help from the students.

3.5 Delay device

Most of the time, teachers can speak fluently and smoothly in the class. Occasionally, however, the information teachers require does not spring to mind immediately. Or teachers are not sure how to continue the topic or they cannot respond to students questions immediately. On these occasions, teachers are likely to use discourse markers well, ok, lets say etc. to act as delay device and search in their memory for the information they require.

Moreover, the discourse markers teachers use in the classroom also perform other functions, e. g. as a mitigator to mitigate a potentially face-threatening utterance, as an attention marker to maintain attention of the students during the classroom activities. Or discourse markers can also be used to seek confirmation from students to make sure the students can understand what the teacher is talking about. Discourse markers can also be used to simply act as conversation filler to substitute for pause or silence, to make the conversation smoothly.

4 Conclusion

Our analysis is based on only five subjects. Admittedly, further study is necessary to examine in detail the usage of discourse markers by other teachers in more diverse aspects. Further studies may need to compare the differences of use of discourse markers by native teachers and Chinese teachers and to find out the deficiencies of Chinese English teachers.

References:

[1]Chen, Yiya and Agnes Weiyun He. Dui bu dui as a pragmatic marker: Evidence from Chinese classroom discourse[J]. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001): 1441-65.

[2]Fuller, Janet M. The influence of speaker roles on discourse marker use[J]. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003): 23-45.

[3]McCarthy, Michael. Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers[M].Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2002.

[4]Rieger, Caroline L.Repetitions as self-repair strategies in English and German conversations[J]. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003): 47-69.

作者简介:王冬梅(1977-),女,辽宁朝阳人,辽宁工程技术大学外语系副教授,硕士,研究方向:英语教学法、语篇分析。