Discourse Markers in Oral Interaction by Third-year ULIS Mainstream English Majors

Discourse Markers in Oral Interaction by Third-year ULIS Mainstream English Majors Lê Thị Thu Huyền Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ học Anh; Mã số: 60 22 15 N

Discourse Markers in Oral Interaction by Third-year ULIS Mainstream English Majors

Lê Thị Thu Huyền

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ học Anh; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS Lê Hùng Tiến

Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract: Never before has the term “pragmatic competence” been mentioned so

frequently in studies on second language learning and foreign language teaching One aspect of pragmatic competence is the use of discourse markers (DMs) in oral communication Despite being small words such as well, you know, I mean, like, DMs are frequently utilized by native speakers and regarded as useful devices to facilitate communication This paper investigates the use of DMs by third-year ULIS English majors in their interaction with the natives Findings reveal that the majority of Vietnamese participants have not paid adequate attention to using DMs in spoken discourse This leads to an urge in uncovering justifications for the students‟ low frequency of DMs from both the teachers‟ and students‟ perspectives The paper also

proposes suggestions on the teaching and learning of DMs

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Giao tiếp; Kỹ năng nói; Diễn ngôn

Content

I INTRODUCTION

I.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM AND RATIONALE

In an increasingly globalized era, teaching and learning English language, especially

in terms of communicative oral skill has become a matter of concern to many linguists and educators Littlewood (1981) regards one‟s ability to “use real and appropriate language to communicate and interact with others” as “the primary goal of most foreign language learning” Communicative ability, however, must address not only grammar and vocabulary but also the knowledge beyond linguistic forms

One of the aspects regarding knowledge beyond linguistic forms is the use of discourse markers (hereafter DMs) in oral communication, which can help to make the speaker sound like a native The lack of linguistic devices such as DMs may account for the fact that in social interactions in English, some ESL/EFL learners may unintentionally come across as “abrupt or brusque” (Lee, n.d.) In other words, the omission of DMs might make the speakers appear impolite or the speech might appear somehow deficient Consider two versions of a conversation:

B1: No, I think I need it

tonight

B2: Well, I think I need it

tonight

In responding to the request, thanks to the presence of the DM well, Speakers B2

sounds more polite and less abrupt The message therefore reaches Speaker A in a less extreme way

Understandably, abruptness may happen most commonly in direct interactions in which no time is given for the interlocutors to think (Östman, 1982 and Croucher, 2004: 41)

The use of DMs such as well, you know, right, okay, I mean, etc can help fill the pauses while

lending the speaker some time to think It is generally agreed that DMs contribute to the pragmatic meaning of utterances, thereby playing an important role in the pragmatic competence of the speaker Defined as “an aspect of communicative competence [which] refers to the ability to communicate appropriately in particular contexts of use” (Jaworski, 1998: 249, cited in Müller, 2005: 18), pragmatic competence is acknowledged as part of what

a student should learn about a language DMs are much related to this kind of competence since they “constitute an intrinsic part of one‟s communicative competence” (Wei, 1996: 2)

In Vietnamese language teaching and learning context, many learners of English, even English-major ones, find it difficult to communicate with foreigners as they lack the strategies

to employ in conversations

All the aforementioned grounds have genuinely inspired the researcher to conduct a

study entitled “Discourse markers in spoken interaction with native speakers: Third-year

ULIS mainstream English majors‟ use and perceptions – Teachers‟ perspectives” It is

hoped that the research would contribute to the teaching and learning of DMs in classroom context, thereby enhancing the students‟ performance in learning foreign languages

I.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

First and foremost, the current interlanguage pragmatic research is conducted with the aims to identify the most frequently-used DMs produced by the students in their interaction with native speakers and then to some extent, to identify the functions of those markers Based on the findings, the students‟ and teachers‟ attitudes towards the use of DMs are scrutinized, paving the way for the pedagogical implications on the teaching of DMs in classroom Finally, some suggested exercises and activities for practicing DMs in English are proposed for those who want to make their conversations authentic and native-like It is also hoped that the paper can raise the awareness of utilizing effective DMs in communication

In short, the study has been carried out to address the four research questions as follows:

1 What are the most common DMs used by third-year ULIS mainstream English majors in their spoken interaction with native speakers?

2 What specific functions do DMs perform in their spoken discourse?

3 What are the students‟ perceptions towards the use of DMs in speaking?

4 What are the teachers‟ perspectives towards the teaching of DMs to the students

in classroom setting?

I.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

There are a great variety of DMs which are classified in a number of ways by various

researchers However, the present study would like to focus on four DMs including well, you know, I mean, and like since they are among the items that are mostly frequently used and

universally identified in speech as DMs (Lee & Hsieh, 2004: 179-180) The researcher aims at

investigating the use of those markers by Vietnamese learners of English to see whether those speakers can create native-like speeches

Notably, DMs are researched in conversations between Vietnamese EFL learners and native speakers of English It is the researcher‟s endeavor to explore the issue in the speech of third-year ULIS mainstream students majoring in English Despite not being investigated, the NSs are present in those interactions to help obtain as much information from the students as possible, with the intention of enhancing the latter‟s participation in the talks The students‟ nonverbal communications are also beyond the scope of the study

I.4 CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY

Theoretically, this study will cast light on a research area which not many Vietnamese

researchers have ever addressed – the use of DMs by EFL/ ESL learners in interactions

Practically, as one of the initial studies in the area in the context of Vietnam, the current

research could be useful for students, teachers, educational managers as well as researchers who are interested in the topic

Specifically, since the study investigates ULIS students‟ deployment of DMs in their interactions with foreigners, its findings will help these students as well as other English-major students improve their performance in oral communication Meanwhile, teachers, after going through this research, will be more aware of their students‟ communicative performance, and thus will be able to help them gradually develop their pragmatic competence As for educational administrators, the paper would provide them with a close and comprehensive view into the current situation, which may then reveal some pedagogical suggestions Finally, researchers who share the same interest will find helpful information from this research to conduct further studies into this relatively new and so far ill-explored issue in the EFL context of Vietnam

II DEVELOPMENT

II.1 LITERATURE REVIEW

II.1.1 Terminology of discourse markers (DMs)

During the last few decades, numerous studies have dealt with DMs under a number of names including “discourse signaling devices” (Polanyi and Scha, 1983, cited in Yang, 2011),

“discourse particles” (Schourup, 1985), “pragmatic particles” (Östman, 1995), “discourse markers” (Schiffrin, 1987; Stenström, 1994; Jucker & Ziv, 1998; Carter and McCarthy, 2006), inter alia In this paper, the researcher adopts the term “discourse markers” since it is deemed

as a broad covering term (Lewis, 2006; Jucker and Ziv, 1998) and “more popular and theoretically neutral” (Huang, 2011)

Despite their different labels due to different theories and approaches, DMs are quite numerous and very easy to be spot out in spoken discourse Typical DMs are linguistic items

or expressions which belong to distinct word classes “as varied as conjunctions (e.g and, but, or), interjections (oh), adverbs (now, then), and lexicalized phrases (y’know, I mean)”

(Schiffrin, Tannen, and Hamilton 2001: 57) DMs help to make interactions coherent by bringing together the different aspects of discourse in a meaningful way

II.1.2 Characteristics of DMs

Although there is no clear consensus about the definition of DMs and the question as

to which words and phrases should be treated as DMs, the following characteristics are generally agreed upon by most researchers:

Characteristics of

Connectivity DMs connect the messages in ongoing

interactions Optionality DMs are optional, both syntactically and

Multigrammaticality DMs come from different grammatical

classes and they cannot be grouped under any single grammatical category

Prosodical

independence

A DM “has to have a range of prosodic contours, e.g tonic stress and followed by a pause, phonological reduction” Schiffrin (1987: 328)

Among those listed characteristics, it should be noted that a combination of mentioned attributes needs to be taken into consideration to identify an item as a DM

above-II.1.3 Selection of DMs in the present study

For this research, four DMs to be investigated include well, you know, I mean, and like These four items were selected as they appear frequently in native corpora These DMs

are among the most salient features of spontaneous talk and they are reported to have the highest frequency of occurrences in native discourses (Trillo, 2002; Fox Tree and Schrock,

1999, cited in Lee and Hsieh, 2004: 180; Stenström, 1994)

II.1.4 Main functions of four selected DMs

While you know, I mean and well have a number of individual functions which are analyzed as working at the textual and at the interactional level, like only functions at the

textual level (Müller, 2005: 242; Huang, 2011) Textual functions organize the content of what is said or mark (parts of) utterances as specific types of utterances, while interactional functions address the hearer directly or organize the sequence of turns between the participants A summary of the selected DMs together with their main functions is found in Appendix 1

II.2 THE STUDY METHOD

II.2.1 Participants

II.2.1.1 Third-year ULIS mainstream English majors

The main subjects of the study include third-year mainstream students at the Faculty

of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE) – ULIS – VNU, coming from 23 classes formed in the academic year 2009 – 2010 According to the course outline of Division III, by the end of their third year at university, the students‟ English proficiency is expected to be at

an Upper-intermediate level, which is equivalent to level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) At this expected level, the use of DMs is projected to be seen in the students‟ spoken discourse (Perez and Macia, 2002, cited in Eslami and Eslami-Rasekh, 2007: 27)

The number of third-year ULIS mainstream English majors in the 2011-2012 academic year in total is about 534, among whom 54 random students, were chosen as respondents for this paper Among this group of 54 learners, there were 50 females and 4 males Due to the unequal distribution of the group in terms of gender, this factor was not taken into consideration in the study The learners‟ ages ranged from 21 to 22, and most of them have been learning English for at least 10 years

Although the number of selected students accounted for only around 10.1% of the target population, they were meticulously selected based on two sampling principles to ensure

the representativeness and validity of the results obtained First, stratified random sampling

was adopted to ensure that each specific group of students in three different majors are

equally chosen Second, the principle of systematic random sampling was to give “a good

spread across the population” (De Vaus, 2002) In all 23 classes, the researcher decided to choose the student‟s ordinal number of 2 as the first in line and an interval of 5 between student numbers In other words, the chosen student numbers according to their class list included the 2nd, 7th, 12th, etc

To increase the participants‟ willingness and eagerness in the participation, they were told that they would have chance to talk to a native speaker and they would be sent some resources to improve their speaking performance later via email Such small yet positive encouragements somehow boosted the number of students participating, which can be seen in the following table

Majors Classes Population Number of

participants

English language teacher education

09E2 –09E14

152

15 Translation and

interpretation

09E23 –09E24

with one native speaker on the topic “Free time and part-time jobs” During the interaction,

the native speakers are expected to make questions (see Appendix 2) to obtain as much information from the students as possible, with the intention of enhancing the latter‟s participation The interaction involves speech acts like describing, explaining, clarifying, showing agreement and disagreement It is from these speech acts that a natural use of DMs is predicted (Huang, 2011: 69)

II.2.1.2 Teachers of English Speaking Skill

Thirteen teachers of Speaking participating in the study are those who are directly teaching English speaking skill to third-year ULIS mainstream students at the Faculty It is therefore worth noting that those teachers clearly understand the state of the issue, particularly their students‟ performance in speaking activities and thus can propose some recommendations for the students to better their speeches The researcher collected data from this group of participants through questionnaires and interviews, the descriptions of which are going to be elaborated in the upcoming section

II.2.2 Data collection instruments and procedures

Both the quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized in this study since different kinds of information about an issue are most comprehensively and economically gathered via this combination Accordingly, it employed three instruments to collect data, including the

NNSs – NSs direct interaction corpus, questionnaires, and interviews The phases in the data collection procedures also follow the order of the instruments presented here

II.2.2.1 The student corpus

The student corpus is based on a 325-minute audio-recording of 54 extended conversations This instrument is to find answers to the first and second research questions In order to have 54 conversations for the corpus, 54 third-year ULIS mainstream English majors interacted in English with either of the two native speakers Each of the conversations lasted from five to seven minutes

After the data (i.e 54 speeches) were gathered, a good amount of time was spent on dealing with the data collected from the student corpus to identify the most frequently-used DMs and their functions To support the analysis process, transcription conventions are used when examples are cited in the study

II.2.2.2 Questionnaires

To dig deep into the issue on the part of the students and the teachers, questionnaire was taken as one of the data collection instruments to respond to research questions 3 and 4 There were two sets of questionnaires One was designed for all third-year ULIS mainstream students who took part in the interaction with native speakers of English (see Appendix 4A) Another set was carried out among the teachers of Speaking Skill in Division III - FELTE (see Appendix 4B)

II.2.2.3 Interviews

There was an interview schedule for the teachers (see Appendix 4C) Three structured interviews were conducted with three teachers of Speaking in Division III, FELTE Each lasted for an average of fifteen minutes With the approval of the participants, all of the talks were recorded for later careful listening

semi-II.3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

II.3.1 The most common DMs used by third-year ULIS mainstream English majors in interaction with NSs of English

The investigated DMs (well, you know, I mean, and like) were found in the students‟

discourse; yet, each DM was recorded with different frequency level

The most common DM is well with 10 times of occurrences – the highest recorded The other three items you know, I mean and like were found to appear 4, 3 and 2 times

respectively in the student group‟s spoken production Particularly special was the case in

which one student excessively used well in his speech Accordingly, with 20 times of

occurrences of the four DMs in the whole recording of 54 students, it can be concluded that DMs were not so commonly and favorably used by third-year ULIS mainstream English majors throughout their speaking turns

The fact that DMs were not much incorporated in the students‟ oral discourse coincides with a number of studies among ESL/ EFL learners done by previous scholars including Fung (2003) and Moreno (2001) Specifically, in her research on the use of DMs by non-native learners of English in Hong Kong, Fung (2003) concludes that her participants (aged 17-19) “seldom incorporated DMs” in their speech Another study that shared the status

of DM use among EFL/ ESL learners is that by Moreno (2001) In an attempt to explore the utilization of DMs by Spanish students of English in their interaction with native speakers,

Moreno‟s (2001) analysis showed that well and other DMs such as you know, I mean, right, okay, really, etc are “hardly used” in the students‟ discourse (Moreno, 2001: 139)

II.3.2 Specific discourse functions of DMs in spoken discourse

 Well

In the 325-minute student corpus, the DM well was reported to show 10 times of occurrences The marker well in the corpus tends to occur at the beginning of a turn

Interestingly, this pattern matches Huang‟s (2001) study in which a large proportion of the

instances of well are found in the turn-initial position in the dialogic genres

Well as a DM functions at both a textual and interactional level, like what has been

concluded in Müller‟s (2005) work At the textual level, one well acts as a delay device used

when the speaker has difficulties expressing him/herself and is searching for the right phrase

(Excerpt 10, see Appendix 5) At the interactional level, two wells function as a face-threat

mitigator when the speaker responds to an argumentative question (Excerpts 2 & 7)

Particularly special was one case in which the excessive use of well by a particular student raised the question of appropriateness Well appeared 7 times in this student‟s speech,

which is quoted in Excerpts 4 and 5 In these excerpts, Student 20a seemed to overuse the DM

well Well in this student‟s first four turns, together with very short replies may make the

hearer interpret that this speaker does not want to participate in the talk Besides, the fourth

well in his speech was unnatural in the way that it did not match any functions previously

found All in all, such overuse and misuse of DMs may create a misleading impression on the hearers

 You know

The present study shows a total of four you knows which fulfilled the criterion as a

DM In terms of positions, 3 out of 4 of you knows in the student data occur in turn medial, 1

in turn initial position and no records of you know in turn final Sharing the same pattern, results in Huang‟s (2011) study shows that the most common position of you know is turn-

medial in both the NNSs‟ and NSs‟ speech

The DM you know itself conveys many a function and some of its typical functions

can be drawn in the student corpus Whether being present in turn initial or medial position,

you know fulfills a number of textual and interactional functions in the student corpus At the

textual level, it marks the speaker’s search for lexical expressions and/ or the content of

what the speaker is going to say next (Excerpt 6) At the interactional level, you know is

utilized to claim shared knowledge between the speaker and hearer (Excerpts 1 & 8) This

agrees with Jucker and Smith‟s (1998) category of you know as an addressee-centered

presentation marker

 I mean

The DM I mean is used to modify the speaker‟s own ideas and intentions (Schiffrin, 1987: 267) and is often seen in turn-medial positions (Fuller, 2003: 30) I mean was used by

the students in this research at both textual and interactional levels Specifically, this marker

was textually used to modify previously-spoken lexical items (Excerpts 3 & 9)

Interactionally, as in Carter and McCarthy‟s (2006: 108) as well as in Huang‟s (2011:221)

findings, I mean co-existing with pauses is found to act as a hesitation marker which lends

the speaker some time to think before speaking (Excerpts 3 & 9) In other words, I mean is

also used as a delaying device (Huang, 2011: 180) That is why the acquisition of the use of this DM is considered to be helpful for learners of English

 Like

Similar to other DMs, the DM like may occur variably in the utterance and is syntactically optional In the students‟ speech, like as a DM appears twice in turn medial

position; more specifically, it is found to co-occur with hesitation markers and pauses to

mark a search for appropriate expressions (Excerpt 6) Besides, like also serves the

purpose of marking an approximate number or quantity (Excerpt 9) It can be seen that

the two recorded functions of the DM like are at the textual level only Like the DMs well and you know, like can also be used when the speaker is thinking about what to say next Most

researchers including Schourup (1985), Müller (2005) and Huang (2011) agree upon those

familiar functions of the DM like

A brief summary and overall comments on the students‟ speaking performance

Overall, the study yields a total number of 19 times of occurrences of the four DMs

well (10 times), you know (4 times), I mean (3 times), like (2 times) in the student corpus

made up of 54 conversations The small number of occurrences is also the result in most

previous studies such as in Moreno‟s (2001) work In her study, well and other DMs such as you know, I mean, right, okay, really, etc are hardly used in the Spanish students of English‟s

discourse (Moreno, 2011: 139)

The absence of DMs in spoken discourse makes the students‟ speech scarcely fluent and natural (Moreno, 2001: 139) The utterance without DMs, as in Excerpt 11, is similar to a piece of writing It is difficult to tell what has gone wrong in this extract; yet, it is clear that incorporating DMs would make the utterances more natural and native-like This conclusion has been drawn by many researchers including Moreno (2001: 139), Liao (2008: 1313) and Huang (2011: 317) Huang (2011: 317-318) believes that an appropriate use of DMs in the spoken mode can facilitate the understanding of propositional meaning and interactional interpretations

In most cases, the students used a lot of ah, um, er and some long pauses when they

could not think of what to say next, as illustrated in Extracts 12 and 13 In these excerpts, the

two students used too much er and ah as delay devices This result was also reported in Liao‟s (2008) study in which frequent occurrences of um could be found among six male and six

female Chinese L1 graduate students in a study-abroad context Meanwhile, the NSs tend to

use well and other DMs frequently in their spoken data as a way of maintaining the floor

while thinking of what to say next (Liao, 2008: 1321) Bearing in mind the communicative functions of the DMs, it can be said that NNSs, particularly third-year ULIS mainstream English majors don‟t seem to utilize DMs in their speaking turns

II.3.3 Justifications for the low frequency of DMs in the students’ spoken discourse

Realizing the fact that DMs are not commonly used in the students‟ speech, the researcher felt a great need to further conduct in-depth questionnaires and interviews among teachers and students with a view to identifying the roots of the problem Among 54 students who were expected to complete the questionnaires, 45 of them returned their answers to the researcher, which accounted for around 83.33% Concerning the teachers, 13 out of 15 questionnaires were sent back to the researcher, leading to a response rate of 86.67%

Most of the students and teachers acknowledged the importance of DMs in oral communication Particularly, 80% of the students and 92.31% of the teachers regard DMs as

“important” and “quite important” elements in oral discourse However, owing to some reasons, DMs were rarely used or were not used at all in the students‟ spoken discourse There were both subjective and objective reasons accounting for the low occurrences of DMs in the students‟ speaking turns:

 Students are not clear about the exact use of DMs

 Students are familiar with speaking in written form

 Students used to regard DMs as redundant words

 Students lack the chance to interact with natives

These aforementioned points raise the question as to whether DMs, their use, functions and prosodic features are explicitly taught to students in class After closely studying the listening and speaking syllabi for ULIS English majors, the researcher could not

find any teaching points related to oral DMs presented This fact is also reflected in the questionnaire and interview results as the teachers reported that DMs are rarely presented as a separate teaching point in both of their oral materials and listening ones

As being common items in the everyday spoken discourse of NSs, DMs are assumed

to have special attention in language classrooms However, DMs are “seldom part of the curriculum in the classroom” in spite of the important role they play in spoken discourse (Liao, 2008: 16) As de Klerk (2005: 275, cited in Liao, 2008: 16) observes, the reason might

be owing to “their [DMs‟] lack of clear semantic denotation and syntactic role, which makes formal or explicit commentary on their use fairly difficult” Due to the fact that DMs are not explicitly taught in class and NNSs can speak grammatically without the use of DMs, DMs are “usually invisible” for EFL/ ESL speakers who learn the language in a formal classroom setting (Liao, 2008: 16)

II.4 SOME PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

II.4.1 Implications for learners of English

Most papers on DMs have confirmed the same conclusion: NNSs display fewer DMs

in their oral interaction than NSs do In fact, the question as to whether NNSs should speak English like NSs is still under debate (Huang, 2011: 343) On the one hand, learners may not need to speak like NSs and they can keep their own cultural identity if they like, as long as their language does not impede comprehension or causes any misunderstandings Meanwhile,

it is undoubtedly beneficial for NNSs to raise their awareness of the use of DMs in certain contexts (Huang, 2011: 343) Learners should take NSs‟ usages as a target norm in order to improve their speaking performance and prevent misinterpretation in communication with NSs

The recommendation above also corresponds with the fact that 40 out of 45 students,

or 88.89% of the respondents would want to acquire the use of DMs and employ them in spoken discourse There are, in fact, several ways to acquire the use of DMs:

 Practice speaking English with NSs

 Watch movies in English to see how DMs are used

 Study listening texts in which DMs are found to see how NSs use DMs

 Listen to talk shows by NSs of English

In any suggestions taken, close attention should be paid to the prosodic features of the DMs in oral interaction As mentioned earlier, DMs are generally found to occur with pauses, phonological reductions and separate tone units which are distinguished from other linguistic items in the discourse units

II.4.2 Implications for teachers of English and syllabus designers

In Vietnam, the fact that DMs as a communicative strategy are rarely found in speech and have yet been explicitly presented in speaking syllabi has highlighted a serious need for the teaching of DMs in classroom In fact, it can be inferred from the description of NNS participants in most research that only at a pre-intermediate level upwards are DMs expected

to be detected in learners‟ spoken discourse (e.g Fung, 2003; Liao, 2008; Huang, 2011) It is generally agreed that only when the students can produce adequately clear utterances should they be taught the use of oral DMs

With regards to syllabus designers and materials developer, the teaching of DMs should be incorporated in the syllabus as well as the materials at appropriate levels Spoken English, particularly oral DMs should receive special attention in the English language teaching and learning context of Vietnam There is a need to increase the level of authenticity and interactiveness in spoken dialogues (Fung, 2011: 226) Classroom materials highly

displaying oral DMs include native speakers‟ corpora, movies, talk shows, all of which add to developing naturalness in both oral and listening skills among learners

III CONCLUSION

III.1 Major findings of the study

Generally speaking, this research has revealed some major findings as follows:

The paper firstly addressed the most frequent DMs employed by third-year ULIS

students The most common item was the DM well with 10 times of occurrences, including the case in which a male student used well 7 times You know and I mean ranked second and third among the four with 4 and 3 occurrences respectively Like as a DM appeared to be the

least commonly-used marker with 2 times appearing in the student corpus Notably, these four markers under investigation were used 19 times in total by 9 out of 54 third-year English majors It can be concluded that most students in the study did not adequately display the use

of DMs in their spoken discourse

The functions of the four DMs used by the Vietnamese participants were not as varied

as those by native speakers found in the literature DMs in the student data mostly occurred with pauses and fillers as a way of “buying” the time when thinking of what to say next Added to that, the student corpus reveals that the Vietnamese NNS users of DMs are not necessarily fluent speakers, but their use of DMs makes the utterance sound more natural and native-like, whereas the speech of non-users of DMs sounds like formal written English or

appears to be less coherent due to the use of a lot of ah, um, er alone This results in clear-cut

distinctions between the NSs‟ speech and NNSs‟

In an endeavor to uncover the reasons for such limited employment of DMs in the students‟ oral discourse, the study suggests that most of the students are not fully aware of the usefulness and functions of DMs in speaking Particularly, 55.56% of the students are not clear about the use of DMs while 37.78% of them used to regard DMs as redundant and unnecessary words in speech

Perceiving the important role of DMs in oral communication, most teachers and students stress the necessity of acquiring a clear understanding of these small yet effective items The paper also proposes two explicit DM teaching frameworks and several suggested activities for teaching DMs to students in classroom settings (see Appendix 7)

III.2 Concluding remarks

This paper is a serious attempt to study the use of DMs, a prominent feature of spoken English with the hope to contribute to the investigation of NNS/ learner language

The student corpus reveals that third-year ULIS mainstream students have not yet displayed a sensible use of DMs in oral communication This fact raises several issues regarding the pragmatic competence of the students as well as their own use of communicative strategies The major significance of pragmatic competence has constantly been highlighted by many researchers since it may ultimately decide whether a speaker has a successful communicative interaction Successful communication in language learning must not only mean correct linguistic forms but also acknowledge language as a reflection of the socio-cultural norms of the L2 community (Vitale, 2009) As already mentioned, DMs are much related to the pragmatic competence, the acquisition of which is directly determined by such factors as: input, instruction, and exposure to the authentic language in real communications (Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnvei, 1998) The shortcomings in each of these factors partly account for the Vietnamese participants‟ infrequent display of oral DMs in their speech The first possible reason is inadequate input which can be found in academic materials such as textbooks The researcher‟s quick look-up of several school textbooks discloses that DMs are not presented much in conversations while the spoken language is quite formal As a matter of fact, most students became acquainted to speaking in written

form and do not utilize effective communicative strategies in conversations Another form of input is that by the instructor Most teachers in the study claimed that they did not explicitly teach their students the use of DMs since this component was not included in the syllabus Besides, the students‟ lack of chance to frequently communicate with native speakers may explain for their rare DM deployment As such, the pragmatic component of language learning, particularly the acquisition of DMs, is neglected Considering the three abovementioned factors, it is necessary to raise the students‟ awareness of the importance and functions of DMs in oral discourse Additionally, adaptation and changes to the curriculum design of school textbooks also need to be reformulated

From the findings obtained, keeping in mind the expected level of third-year ULIS mainstream English majors, one might question the students‟ real speaking ability, particularly their communicative competence However, it needs further research before coming to the conclusion of this issue Such low frequency of DMs has inspired the researcher to propose a number of implications for pedagogy presented in the previous chapter, which hopefully are found beneficial to both teachers and learners

III.3 Suggestions for further research

Notwithstanding the researcher‟s sustained efforts, certain limitations remain in the study as a result of time constraints and some unpredictable problems The shortcomings of the present paper serve as the bases for some suggestions for other researchers sharing the same interest in the field

Firstly, future research may expand the scope of the study by considering the use of DMs in its broader sense, i.e DMs in different categories such as referential and structural DMs or interpersonal and cognitive DMs

In addition, further research could dig deep into the issue by comparing and contrasting the pattern of DM use between the NNSs and NSs To reduce the hard work of finding comparable corpus of the natives, researchers in the field may collect the data for the corpus themselves by involving both NNSs and NSs participating in an interaction or completing the same tasks

Lastly, future researchers may make more careful choice of the participants by narrowing down the possible interlocutors using stricter set of criteria such as level of proficiency, average mark of Speaking skill, etc By doing so, only competent learners of English are qualified to take part in the interactions, thereby raising greater chances of oral DMs to be found If possible, the whole recordings of the participants should be transcribed in order to measure the frequency rate of each marker All these would contribute to better comparison of the use of each marker between the NNSs and NSs

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, valid and reliable data could be yielded and drawn from the study thanks to the researcher‟s serious concerns about the matter and the employment of effective research methods Nonetheless, those limitations should always be considered when future studies are to be undertaken

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IN VIETNAMESE

Diệp Quang Ban (1998) Văn bản và liên kết trong tiếng Việt NXB Giáo dục, Hà Nội

Ngô Hữu Hoàng (2001) Mấy vấn đề về quán ngữ trên cứ liệu tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt

Kỷ yếu ngữ học trẻ, Hội ngôn ngữ học Việt Nam, 240-245

Ngô Hữu Hoàng (2002) Vai trò của quán ngữ trong việc kiến tạo phát ngôn Luận án

Tiến sĩ, ĐHKH-SHNV, ĐHQG Hà Nội

Ngô Hữu Hoàng (2010) Hiểu và dịch tiểu từ Well của tiếng Anh như một dấu hiệu diễn ngôn: Một nghiên cứu dịch thuật trên cơ sở ngữ dụng học Tạp chí Khoa học ĐHQGHN, Ngoại ngữ, 27, 17-21

Nguyễn Thị Việt Thanh (1999) Hệ thống liên kết lời nói tiếng Việt NXB Giáo dục, Thành

Textual Level Interactional Level

well  (as a delay device)

searching for the right

phrase

 rephrasing/correcting

 acting as a threat mitigator

face- marking continuation in speech

 signaling a search for

lexical words or content

 appealing for acceptance

 appealing for patience, understanding and sympathy

 softening the force

 acting as a mitigator

like  searching for the