Discourse markers in oral interaction by third year ulis mainstream english majors

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ THỊ THU HUYỀN DISCOURSE MARKERS IN ORAL INTERACTION BY THIRD-YEAR ULIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ THU HUYỀN

DISCOURSE MARKERS IN ORAL INTERACTION BY THIRD-YEAR ULIS MAINSTREAM ENGLISH MAJORS

(Dấu Hiệu Diễn Ngôn trong Giao Tiếp Nói của

Sinh Viên Năm Thứ 3 Khoa Tiếng Anh, ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ THU HUYỀN

DISCOURSE MARKERS IN ORAL INTERACTION BY THIRD-YEAR ULIS MAINSTREAM ENGLISH MAJORS

(Dấu Hiệu Diễn Ngôn trong Giao Tiếp Nói của

Sinh Viên Năm Thứ 3 Khoa Tiếng Anh, ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hu ̀ng Tiến

HANOI - 2012

1 Statement of the problems and rationale behind the study 1

1.1.2 Characteristics of DMs 9

1.1.3 Selection of DMs in the present study 12

1.1.4 Main functions of four selected DMs 13

1.2.1 Related studies worldwide 15

1.2.2 Related studies in Vietnam 19

2.1.1 Third-year ULIS mainstream English majors 21

2.1.2 Teachers of English Speaking Skill 25

3.1 Most common DMs used by third-year ULIS mainstream English majors

in spoken interaction with native speakers of English

32 3.2 Specific discourse functions of DMs in spoken discourse 34

3.3 Justifications for the low frequency of DMs in students‟ spoken discourse 47

CHAPTER 4: SOME PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS AND

4.1.1 Implications for learners of English 52

4.1.2 Implications for teachers of English and syllabus designers 55

4.2.1 Two explicit DM teaching frameworks 57

4.2.2 Some suggested activities for teaching oral DMs 60

3 Limitations of the current study 67

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Figure 3: The extent to which DMs are displayed in students‟ oral discourse, as

perceived by the students and teachers

49

Figure 4: Possible reasons for the students‟ infrequent display of DMs in speech,

from the perspectives of the students and the teachers

50

Figure 5: The extent to which DMs have been explicitly taught by teachers 51 Figure 6: The students‟ expectation to acquire and incorporate DMs in their speech 54 Figure 7: Ways for students to acquire the use of oral DMs as suggested by the

students and teachers

55

Figure 8: Teachers' perception towards the level at which DMs should be explicitly

taught

57

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

DM(s) Discourse marker(s)

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ESL English as a Second Language

FELTE Faculty of English Language Teacher Education

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem and rationale behind the study

In the world of increasing globalization, teaching and learning English language, especially in terms of communicative oral skill has become a matter of concern to many linguists and educators Ur (1996: 120) states that “of all the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), speaking seems intuitively the most important” Ur‟s (1996) viewpoint was supported later on by Rudder (1999: 25) who regards speaking skill

as “one of the most important goals in language teaching” since it is “now more than ever before (…) essential for interactive survival in a global setting.”

It is not hard to find many other researchers and linguists who stress the importance

of communicative skill In Littlewood‟s (1981: 89) words, one‟s ability to “use real and appropriate language to communicate and interact with others” is – and should be – “the primary goal of most foreign language learning” Since the adoption of the communicative language teaching approach, the prioritized focus has been put on the achievement of functional abilities in the target language Language learning has therefore shifted from a grammatical perspective to a communicative perspective that emphasizes the ability to use the linguistic system effectively and appropriately in the target language and culture Similarly, Campbell and Wales (1970, cited in Nguyen, 2006: 1) stress that in order to speak competently, not only does a person need to know the grammar and pronunciation rules of a language but s/he is also required to discern what to say, to whom, in which circumstances, and in what manner It is understandable why many acknowledge the importance of knowledge in a foreign language beyond grammar and vocabulary

One of the aspects regarding knowledge beyond grammar and vocabulary is the use

of discourse markers (hereafter DMs) in oral communication, which can help to make the speaker sound like a native This aspect, however, seems to be ignored though they belong

to the speaker‟s delivery, particularly his/her fluency, which is said to define the way the listeners perceive the speaker (Croucher, 2004: 38) 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 The following two conversations given by Lee (n.d.) can clearly exemplify the above point:

Conversation 1

Speaker A: Could I borrow your car? Speaker B1: No, I think I need it tonight

Speaker B2: Well, I think I need it tonight

Conversation 2

Speaker C: Could you take me to the

airport next weekend?

Speaker D1: I’m going to be out of town next

weekend

Speaker D2: Well uh, I'm going to be out of

town next weekend

In responding to the requests, thanks to the presence of DMs (Well, uh…),

Speakers B2 and D2 sound more polite and less abrupt The messages therefore reach Speakers A and C in a less extreme way although their requests have been refused

Understandably, abruptness may especially happen most commonly in direct interactions in which no time is given for the interlocutors to think (Östman, 1982 and Croucher, 2004: 41) Having to think of ideas and select words to utter at the same time, these students may encounter problems of on-line discourse production (Chaudron and

Richard, 1986) As a matter of fact, the use of DMs such as well, you know, right, okay, I

mean, etc can help fill the pauses In fact, these items were considered performance errors

for a long time (Moreno, 2001: 130) Luckily enough, their important roles in conversations and speeches have been increasingly acknowledged in a growing number of recent studies Stenström (1994: 17) believes that a conversation is “much less lively and less 'personal' without [DMs] signaling receipt of information, agreement and involvement” As stressed by Moreno (2001: 130), DMs not only help to “build coherence”, but they also “fulfill multiple interactive functions fundamental to the speaker – hearer relationship” Although DMs have been viewed from a variety of perspectives and approaches, 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

Similarly, the significance of the use of DMs is asserted in Moreno‟s (2001: 130-131) study that “they form part of the L2 students‟ pragmatic competence” Never before has the term “pragmatic competence” been mentioned so frequently in the body of research on second language (L2) learning and foreign language teaching 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‟s, 1996: 2)

In Vietnamese language teaching and learning context, many learners of English, even English-major ones, find it difficult to communicate with foreigners due to the fact that they lack the strategies to employ in conversations Meanwhile, DMs have been relatively neglected despite their claimed function as useful communicative strategies Being intrigued to further study the EFL speakers‟ use of DMs in interactions, the researcher conducts an investigation of the issue among English-major students in ULIS who are trained to become teachers and interpreters or do business-related jobs in the future It is undeniable that those students, in their prospect jobs, are required to communicate frequently with foreigners Nonetheless, owing to some reasons, students do not seem to pay due attention to make such interactions as authentic and native-like as that

of the native speakers

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

study entitled “ Discourse Markers in Oral Interaction by Third-year ULIS Mainstream English Majors ” 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

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 order to achieve the above-mentioned aims, 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?

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) More justifications regarding the choice of DMs will be presented in Section 1.1.3 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 native speakers 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; therefore, their nonverbal signals would not be tracked throughout their spoken discourse

4 Contribution of the study

Theoretically, this study will throw 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

In general, students, teachers, educational administrators and researchers are those who are likely to benefit from the study The present paper is hoped to contribute to a small but growing amount of research into the speaking performance of Vietnamese speakers of English

5 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of three main parts:

PART I: INTRODUCTION

The rationale, aims, scope of the study as well as its methodology are presented in this initial part

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

The main part of the study is divided into three chapters

Chapter 1 (Literature Review) lays the theoretical foundations for the whole study, including the definitions of key terms as well as a concise review of related studies on DMs undertaken by researchers in the world and in Vietnam

Chapter 2 (Methodology) elaborates on the research methods, participants, instruments, data collection procedure and data analysis methods

Chapter 3 (Results and Discussion) presents the results of the research and gives interpretation and analyses of major patterns found in the data Besides, the discussion referring back to the literature in the research areas is also included to show the similarities and differences in the findings

Chapter 4 (Some pedagogical implications and suggested DMs teaching resources) puts forwards some implications for EFL learners and teachers of English It also proposes some recommended activities and two explicit DMs teaching frameworks for teachers‟ references

PART III: CONCLUSION

This part summarizes the major findings of what has been carried out in the research Subsequently, the limitations of the research are also pointed out before some suggestions for further studies are made Following this chapter are the references and appendices

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter, as its name suggests, elucidates the literature related to the study, thereby helping to lay concrete foundations for the development of the succeeding parts of

the paper Initially, the term “Discourse markers” and its characteristics will be defined

Following the characterization of the key term is a comprehensive review of related studies

to reveal the research gap which will be bridged to a certain extent by the present study

1.1 Discourse markers

DMs have been the focus of many studies, becoming a matter of concern to researchers from the 70s onwards The general consensus in the literature is that DMs are difficult to fit into traditional grammatical categories However, little agreement has been reached on their terminology, definition and classification This section begins with the justification for the use of the term “discourse marker” (DMs), followed by their widely-accepted characteristics It then moves towards the selection of DMs in the current study

1.1.1 Terminology

Research has shown the fundamental roles of DMs in interactions (Carter and McCarthy, 2006) due to their high frequency of occurrence in spoken discourse 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 connectives” (Blakemore 1987, cited in Huang, 2011: 22), “discourse operators” (Redeker, 1991), “discourse markers” (Schiffrin, 1987; Stenström, 1994; Jucker & Ziv, 1998; Fraser,

1990, 1999; Trillo, 2002; Müller, 2004; Carter and McCarthy, 2006), inter alia The last term (i.e discourse markers) is probably the most frequently-used term and it is regarded

as a broad covering term (Lewis, 2006; Jucker and Ziv, 1998) Besides, concerning DMs‟ functions, this term is also used under such labels as: “discourse connectors, turn-takers,

confirmation seekers, intimacy signals, topic-switchers, hesitation markers, boundary markers, fillers, prompters, repair markers, attitude markers, and hedging devices” (Jucker and Ziv, 1998: 1-2) A generalization of those linguistic labels of DMs and many others is summarized in the following table (Table 1)

 backchannels/ backchannel cues  Verschuren, 1999

 continuatives  Trillo, 1997

 cue words  Horne et al, 2011

 discourse markers  Schiffrin, 1987; Jucker & Ziv, 1998; Fraser,

1990, 1999; Trillo, 2002; Müller, 2004; Carter and McCarthy, 2006

 discourse signaling devices  Polanyi & Scha, 1983

 discourse connectives  Blackmore, 1987, 1992

 discourse operators  Redeker, 1991

 discourse particles  Goldberg, 1980; Schourup, 1985

 fillers  Brown & Yule, 1983

 linguistic markers  Redeker, 1991

 pragmatic expressions  Erman, 1992

 pragmatic devices  van Dijk, 1979

 pragmatic operators  Ariel, 1994

 pragmatic particles  Östman, 1995

 utterance particles  Luke, 1990

Table 1: Terminology variations of DMs (adapted from Yang, 2011) The aforesaid terms are coined based on different theories and approaches, which are not discussed here due to space limit In this paper, the researcher adopts the term

“discourse markers” which was seen by Schourup (1999: 228) as “the most popular of a host of competing terms used with partially overlapping reference” This term is, moreover, deemed as “more popular and theoretically neutral” (Huang, 2011)

Despite their different labels in previous studies, 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) Schiffrin (1987) is said to be among the first scholars to instigate the characterization of DMs as her works have been cited in many

linguistic research and articles DMs are defined by Schiffrin (1987: 31) as “sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk”, which means nonobligatory utterance-initial items that function in relation to ongoing talk and text (Schiffrin, 1987: 31) As a matter of fact, DMs often help to make interactions coherent by bringing together the different aspects of discourse in a meaningful way Fraser (1999) describes DMs 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 interpretations 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

(Fraser, 1999: 931)

Fraser‟s (1999) specification is once again supported in Levinson (1983)‟s idea that DMs refer to the expressions which indicate the relationship between an utterance and the prior discourse In the same vein, Redeker (1991: 1168) defines DMs as words or phrases that are uttered with the key function of drawing to the listener‟s attention a particular kind

of linkage of the upcoming utterance with the immediate discourse context

1.1.2 Characteristics of DMs

In general, there is no clear consensus about the definition of DMs and the question

as to which words and phrases should be treated as DMs remains confusing Despite this, the following characteristics are generally agreed upon by most researchers as the basic criteria Among these, common features such as connectivity, optionality, non-truth conditionality, flexibility of position and multigrammaticality are discussed below

(1.) I was searching for the key in the dark with just a torch, and suddenly I heard a loud

(2) [On seeing someone carrying lots of parcels]

So you‟ve spent all your money

(Blakemore 1987: 85, 106, cited in Huang, 2011: 27)

In Example (2) above, the speaker uses so to connect his or her utterance to the context

Other DMs such as right, OK and now seem to suggest a different kind of

relationship of connectivity These three DMs might be used to open a topic, for instance

when a teacher begins a lecture with OK or now They mark the disconnection from the

previous utterance (e.g students‟ chats) and the context (e.g a break between lectures)

Optionality

Another characteristic which is generally accepted is that DMs are optional, both syntactically and semantically In other words, the addition or removal of a DM does not affect the syntactic value of the sentence and a DM does not create meaning (Fraser, 1990) and will not alter the conceptual meaning of the utterance.Similarly, Rouchota (1998, cited

in Jucker and Ziv, 1998) concludes that DMs are optional and can be omitted and such omission does not affect the truth values of the propositions in which they occur This also coincides with Akande‟s (2008: 81) idea that DMs has a “peripheral” relationship with their surrounding sentence or clause since they can be removed “without causing any

damage to the structure of the sentence or clause” This can be clearly seen by the fact that when the DM is left out, the grammaticality of a sentence remains unchanged

Consider the following two examples:

(3) I like this subject better

(4) you know, I like this subject better

In traditional grammar, words classed as adjective and adverbs can be syntactically

optional In Example (3), better can be deleted and the clause is still syntactically correct yet it loses some semantic meaning In Example (4), you know can be omitted without

affecting the utterance‟s syntactical or semantic values

In short, though being optional, DMs are by no means considered useless, irrelevant or redundant items In fact, they do facilitate the process of interpretation in interactions (Fraser, 1990; Carter and McCarthy, 2006; Fung and Carter, 2007) Serving certain functions in spoken discourse, DMs make the utterances becomes more explicit

Flexibility of position

Depending on their functions, DMs may appear at the initial, medial or final position of an utterance The following set of examples illustrates the various positions of DMs:

(5) … Well, I believe that a better solution is needed here… like… very strict punishments for those who break the laws, like doing community service or paying very high fines

(6) A: So you are allergic to animals?

B: Yes, well, but it doesn‟t mean that I don‟t like cats, you know

Multigrammaticality

DMs come from different grammatical classes and they cannot be grouped under

any single grammatical category They can be adverbs (now, then, therefore), verbs (look,

say, see, listen), conjunctions (and, but, also, nevertheless), interjections (oh, well)

sequencing conjuncts (first, next, finally), or non-finite clauses (to be frank, to be honest, I

mean, you see, you know) According to Hansen (1998, cited in Fung, 2003: 58), they are

intermediate between grammatical and lexical items

Prosodical independence

DMs have to be prosodically independent (Fung and Carter, 2007: 413) Schiffrin (1987: 328) suggests that a DM “has to have a range of prosodic contours, e.g tonic stress and followed by a pause, phonological reduction” Therefore, the prosodic clues that go with DMs include pauses, phonological reductions and separate tone units which are distinguished from other linguistic items in the discourse units bearing the same manifestation

All things considered, among those listed characteristics, it should be noted that any attribute alone is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for the verification of DM status Instead, a combination of criteria needs to be taken into consideration to identify an item as a DM

1.1.3 Selection of DMs in the present study

As Jucker (1993: 436) noted, no research has been able to come up with an exhaustive list of DMs either in English or in any other languages However, it is not difficult to identify some prominent DMs in spoken discourse which are acknowledged as

DMs by various analysts For this research, four DMs to be investigated include well, you

know, I mean, and like The selection of DMs is grounded on theoretical basis To be more

specific, these items, also known as fluency devices, are often used by interlocutors to maintain the floor while thinking of what to say next in the stream of speech (Ngo Huu Hoang, 2002: 74, cited in Nguyen Thi Hong Nga, 2006: 29) For that reason, these DMs are regarded as effective interactive strategies which should be employed by speakers to attain successful communication goals

The four items well, you know, I mean, and like as DMs were selected as they appear frequently in native corpora Their status as DMs in oral discourse is disclosed by

Schiffrin‟s (1987) preliminary study on DMs These DMs, according to Trillo (2002), are reported to have the highest frequency of occurrences in native discourses in the London-

Lund Corpus, except for affirmative or negative elements, i.e., yeas, yeah, no and the hesitation marker um In addition to that, Fox Tree and Schrock (1999, cited in Lee and Hsieh, 2004: 180) assert that the employment of well and I mean is among the most salient features of spontaneous talk According to Stenström (1994), I mean, well and you know

are “peculiar to spoken discourse” and they are used frequently in native-speakers‟ spoken discourse to start, carry on, and terminate the conversation, or organize or hold the turn, mark boundaries in the discourse

Regarding like, this item has become a common DM among NSs and received

much attention from a number of researchers such as Jucker and Ziv (1998), Fuller

(2003b), Müller (2005) and Huang (2011) Like as a DM is claimed to be frequently

attributed to young people (Andersen, 2001 cited in Müller, 2005: 202)

1.1.4 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

Following is the summary of the selected DMs together with their main functions Reviews of the literature on each marker under investigation are to be briefly provided, compared and contrasted with the student data in the analysis chapter

Level / DMs Textual Level Interactional Level

well  (as a delay device) searching for the

right phrase

rephrasing/correcting

 acting as a face-threat mitigator

 marking continuation in speech

you know  marking reported speech

 prefacing important information

 signaling a search for lexical words or content information

indicating clarifications and

 appealing for acceptance

appealing for patience,

understanding and sympathy

 softening the force of utterance

 acting as a question

I mean  marking a self-repair

 elaborating, clarifying, modifying or

expanding what has been said

 orientating the speaker’s talk

Table 2: Main functions of the four DMs (Adapted from Müller, 2005: 246 and Huang, 2011)

It can be seen from the table above that interactional functions are particular to each discourse marker; in contrast, textual functions can be similar across different markers

Those markers were asserted by Müller (2005: 26) to hold “a range of different characteristics which might potentially be relevant for the usage by EFL speakers”.However, their frequency of occurrence in a person‟s speech should be appropriate so that his/her speech is not seen as irritating (Müller, 2005)

All in all, the present study aims at scrutinizing the use of DMs includingwell, you know, I mean, and like as produced by third-year ULIS students The next part is dedicated

to a brief overview of third-year ULIS mainstream English majors – the informants in the present study

1.2 Previous studies on DMs

Research on DMs has steadily proliferated and diversified since the 1980s Most of the studies provide analyses and descriptions of DM use in different languages In Schiffrin‟s (2001) conclusion, DMs have been examined in an array of genres and interactive contexts, and in a variety of different language contact situations Within the scope of the current study, only those related to DM use in English spoken discourse will

be reviewed

1.2.1 Related studies worldwide

Studies on DMs and L2 learners’ listening comprehension

Although the present paper does not study DMs to check L2 learners‟ listening comprehension, the researcher still spares this part to reflect the value of DMs in spoken interaction, which lies in the comprehensibility of speech production

Jung (2003) conducts a study on the role of discourse signaling cues in L2 listening among 80 Korean learners of English as a Foreign Language This study was based on Chaudron and Richards (1986)‟s classification of cues into macromarkers (cues used to signal the relationship among main segments or to mark the major transition points in

discourse; e.g what I’m going to talk about today…) and micromarkers (cues indicate intersentential relations or to function as pause fillers; e.g and, so and well) His aim was

to discover whether and how the combination of macromarkers and micromarkers affect L2 listening comprehension The study has demonstrated that the group listening to a lecture with cues recalls significantly more high- and low-level information when performing summary tasks than the group listening to a lecture without such cues

With a similar ultimate aim, Eslami and Eslami-Rasekh (2007) investigates the effect of the use of DMs on academic listening comprehension of Iranian university students in an English as a Foreign Language setting Two groups of students listened to two different versions of a lecture The two versions were dissimilar with respect to the quantity and type of DMs used Listening comprehension tests and their mean scores were

then compared The findings clearly indicate that subjects comprehended the lecture better when DMs were included than when they were omitted

The value of DMs in aiding listening comprehension has also confirmed by Tyler and Bro (1992):

in any communicative situation, participants bring a set of expectations

concerning how discourse-structuring cues signal relationships among the expressed ideas When [these] cues are missing or are used in unexpected ways [listeners] find a meaningful interpretation difficult to construct, and therefore judge the

discourse as incoherent

(Tyler and Bro, 1992: 74-75, cited in Wei, 1996: 34)

It should be hence interpreted that the absence or misuse of DMs fails to provide appropriate direction to the hearers and may prevent them from building a coherent interpretation of the discourse (Wei, 1996: 35)

Studies on NNSs’ use of DMs in oral communication

As DMs received much attention due to their significance in spoken discourse,

a small but growing number of studies have been undertaken on the employment of DMs

by L2 learners Some of those studies consider the uses of the DMs by NNSs while some

on the comparative DM usage by NSs and NNs This section will first deal with some most

widely-cited and influential studies on the use of DMs by NNSs in oral discourse

Müller‟s (2005) research, based on a 350,000-word corpus of spoken English by American NSs and German NNSs, provides a detailed analysis of the frequencies and

functions of the four DMs so, well, you know and like Her study was well-designed for

collecting comparable data from silent movie narratives and discussions Rather than adopting an existing framework, Müller (2005) manually identified the functions of the four DMs and classified them at two levels, the textual and the interactional level The functions at the textual level are not used to address the listeners but focus on lexical expressions (e.g a speaker‟s search for words, restarting and repairing), the structure of propositional contents (e.g explanations and exemplifications) and the

distinction between the speaker‟s voice and reported speech The functions at the interactional level work for the relationship between speakers and listeners by marking

a speech act, response, opinion, evaluation, appeal to the listener, etc So, you know and

well have been found to serve a number of functions at both the textual and interactional

levels Like only functions at the textual level It has been remarked that German students use the DMs so, you know and like less frequently than American students do and the DM

well with similar frequency; some functions are used only by American students and some

only by German students

Unlike Müller‟s compilation of two comparable corpora, Wang and Zhu‟s (2005) research investigates fifteen types of DMs in the Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SECCL) and the spoken component of the British National Corpus (BNC) The former consists of Chinese-speaking NNSs‟ monologues and dialogues, while the latter includes NSs‟ informal conversations Three main differences between Chinese NNSs and NSs in the use of DMs were highlighted First, the NNSs and NSs use different types of DMs Second, the NNSs underuse DMs in terms of frequency and type Finally, the NNSs

overuse some of the additive and emphatic DMs, such as and, but and very and fillers with semantic meaning, such as I think Huang (2011) notes that using the terms under- and

over-representation of a particular DM would be more appropriate than the terms underuse

and overuse in this case

Another of the few studies carried out on the use by NNSs of DMs is Fung and Carter‟s (2007) The two researchers compared the use of DMs by NSs and Hong Kong NNSs in pedagogic settings Based on a 460,055-word sub-corpus of the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) and a 14,157-word learner corpus of interactive classroom discourse, they examined a wide range of DMs in a framework of interpersonal, referential, structural and cognitive categories Native speakers are found to use discourse markers for a wider variety of pragmatic functions More specifically, the Hong Kong NNSs extensively use referential and structural DMs

(and, but, because, I think) but have limited use of others that are frequently used by the NSs (and, right, yeah, well, so, now, sort of, you know, actually, see, say and cos)

Huang‟s (2011) paper explores the use of DMs in the speech of Chinese NNSs of

English and NSs using corpus methodologies It reports that the DMs for analysis, like, oh,

well, you know, I mean, you see, I think and now, occur more frequently in the dialogic

genres than in the monologic genres extracted from the Chinese NNS corpus (SECCL) and two NS corpora (MICASE and ICE-GB) This supports his hypothesis that the more interactive the genre or activity type is, the more DMs occur In most cases, the markers appear less frequently in NNSs‟ speech than the native one

While the above studies compared DM use by NSs and NNSs through two respective corpora, some others approach the same issue using the NNSs only

Hays‟s (1992) work with the classroom oral discourse by some Japanese learners of English studied seven DMs including both ideational and interactional markers (cited in

Müller, 2005) Only three students were found to be able to use well, while the great majority of students were able to use and, but, and so ideationally Hays (1992) claims that

ideational DMs are acquired earlier (cited in Müller, 2005: 67) because they are overtly taught while markers on the interactional plane seem to be neglected This study makes us aware of a possible difference in the acquisition of the two different types of DMs by nonnative learners; more competent learners are expected to be better able to use interactional DMs

Moreno (2001) also investigates NNSs‟ use of DMs based on the data taken from the direct interaction between NNSs and NSs In his study, Moreno (2001) analyzed some

DMs such as well, you know, right, okay, I mean, etc which appeared in fifteen

conversations in English between NNSs and NSs The NNSs were undergraduate students

in their third, fourth and fifth year of English Language and Literature at the University of Seville Her analyses indicate that those items are hardly used as DMs in the students‟ discourse, resulting in distinctly non-native discourse, which can negatively affect the students‟ images

Likewise, Chen (n.d.) compared the use of DMs in interactions between natives and non-natives when social roles changed Specifically, six English as a Foreign Language (EFL) college freshmen and six English as a Native Language speakers (ENSs) took part

in some role-play situations which differed from each other in terms of power and distance

The results revealed that well, you know and so are the most commonly used DMs by both

the ENSs and the EFL learners It was concluded that the nature of requests, the functions

of these markers in discourse and the responses from the addressees are main factors determining these markers‟ occurrences Power and distance relationship among the interlocutors were not so much a factor The under-representation of students‟ DM use is partly attributable to a lack of DMs found from the textbooks

This conclusion was also reached by a group of researchers in Pakistan namely

Jabeen, Rai, and Arif (2011) Their study sets out to study the frequency of eight DMs (I

mean, you know, I think, kind of, sort of, well, you see, so) in British and Pakistani English

It also investigates the position and function of DMs in Pakistani English speech based on two corpora The results suggest that NSs of English use more DMs in their speech as compared to the NNSs

The previously-cited studies serve as illustrations which contribute to the understanding of the use of DMs by NNSs and NSs Despite their differences in the methodologies, these studies have, to a certain extent, revealed the observed under- and over-representation of the DMs in spoken discourse produced by NNSs

1.2.2 Related studies in Vietnam

In Vietnam, a number of linguists who make significant contributions to the study

of discourse analysis include Diep Quang Ban (1998), Tran Ngoc Them (1999), Nguyen Thi Viet Thanh (1999), among many others The research area shared among these authors

is the study of DMs as cohesive devices in texts and utterances in Vietnamese language

Approaching the same issue, Ngo Huu Hoang (2001, 2002, 2010) goes further by conducting contrastive discourse analysis with clear evidence in both English and Vietnamese Particularly, in one of his articles, Ngo Huu Hoang (2001) classifies DMs into

18 types, each of which has typical examples in both languages In his conclusion, he suggests that the structure and meaning of markers in spoken discourse should be investigated in the light of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, etc

Digging deeper into the marker well, in a pragmatic translation study, Ngo Huu Hoang (2010) highlights the pragmatic meaning of well and proposes a translation approach to the marker well on a three-step basis: (1) Contextualizing; (2) Explaining

using metalanguage; and (3) Finding an equivalent in Vietnamese to produce an accurate and interesting target language version He also suggests the same techniques for the Vietnamese-English translation Though the paper does not directly address the situation of

DM use by Vietnamese learners of English, it is remarkably useful for L2 learners to

thoroughly grasp the meaning of the DM well

Another study on DM use in Vietnam that the researcher can find is the one by Nguyen Thi Hong Nga (2006) In her thesis, Nguyen Thi Hong Nga (2006) examines DMs

in the dialogues of the Vietnamese new set of English textbooks for lower secondary school students (named Tieng Anh 7) The frequency of occurrence of the main types and sub-types of DMs in the dialogues collected from Tieng Anh 7 are measured, which is then followed by a description of their characteristics, functions and classifications The nature

of Nguyen Thi Hong Nga‟s (2006) study is that she used scripted texts instead of authentic, face-to-face recordings for the study It can be argued that the scripted texts are somehow adequate in representing real-life communications Nonetheless, authentic communications

do more than the scripted texts in that the former provides the researcher with the contexts, prosody, and the real interaction experience among interlocutors – those are the points that scripted texts fail to convey

In Vietnam to date, the status of the utilization of DMs by Vietnamese learners of English has yet to be characterized The current study is a concerted effort to investigate the issue from the perspective of Vietnamese EFL learners More specifically, the paper will study the use of DMs by third-year ULIS English majors in their interaction with people whose first language is English

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter provides a detailed description of the methodology of this study, including the participants and the data collection instruments A full account of the procedure of data collection and analysis is also clarified in this chapter

2.1 Participants

The process of data collection involved the participation of both third-year ULIS mainstream English-major students and teachers of English as follows:

2.1.1 Third-year ULIS mainstream English majors

As the main subjects of the study, third-year mainstream students at the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE) – ULIS – VNU need to be described in detail This group of students comes from 23 classes which were formed in the academic year 2009 – 2010

To gain admission into the university, the students were required to take three university entrance examinations in three subjects, one of which is English English pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar were tested in two main skills namely reading and writing There was no speaking test in the exam After passing the exams, the students were randomly arranged into classes according to their previously chosen majors – English language teacher education (Classes 09E2 – 09E14), double majors – 721 program (09E15 – 09E22), or translation and interpretation (09E23 – 09E24), excluding the Fast-track program students who are beyond the scope of this study The distribution of students in different specific major classes can be seen in the following table:

Specific major Number of students

English language teacher (ELT) education 353

Double majors – 721 program 152

Translation and interpretation 29

Total number of third-year mainstream English majors: 534

Table 3: The distribution of students in different specific major classes

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) More specifically, students are presumably able to express themselves “fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions” Besides, they are expected to “use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes” (CEFR, n.d.) It can be inferred from this description that students should develop some strategies which make them confident in communicating in English In order to attain this primary objective, the students are to develop adequate skills to do typical language-related jobs after graduation such as qualified teachers and interpreters Aware of the fact that these jobs are among the ones which center on speaking well (Geshelin, 2004), teachers of the Faculty have provided their students with various chances to develop their speaking skills by implementing many activities such as forums, debate, presentations, impromptu speaking mini-contests, etc

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, accounting for about 10.1%, were chosen as respondents for this paper

The idea for choosing third-year students as the informants of the paper ignited from the researcher‟s experiences with and observations of three groups of first-year, second-year and third-year students in their speaking lessons During 12 observation sessions in six representative classes of three different student groups, DMs were not found

as much in the first two groups of students as the last one This may be attributed to the fact that first-year and second-year students, at their current speaking level, seem to focus more on developing ideas while not yet paying due attention to adopting communicative strategies It is the researcher‟s intention to choose third-year students as the subjects of the study to ensure a certain level of language proficiency (intermediate or above) required for DMs to be noticed and to show their facilitating effect (Perez and Macia, 2002, cited in Eslami and Eslami-Rasekh, 2007: 27) Fourth-year students were not chosen purposely since they were in their final academic year busy with their teaching or interpreting majors

and practicum Additionally, Fast-track students were outside the scope of the paper since

it is the researcher‟s aim to investigate the issue among the same group of students who enjoy comparable syllabi and leaning activities Justifiably, third-year English majors at ULIS mainstream were therefore selected as the main respondents of the research

The participants were referred to by numerical order in in-text excerpts, for example, S 1a, S 1b, S 2a, S2b, S 3a, S 3b, etc The students under the labels S 1a, S 2a, S 3a, etc are those who interacted with native speaker 1 (NS 1) Similarly, the code names S 1b, S 2b, S 3b, etc indicate the interlocutors who spoke with native speaker 2 (NS 2) 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

the population be represented in the sample in its correct proportion (De Vaus, 2002: 74)

In 23 classes for third-year ULIS mainstream English majors, there are 13 teacher-training classes with 353 students, 8 classes for 152 double major students and 2 for 29 translation and interpretation majors Thus, the ratio of teacher trainees to double majors to translator and interpreter ones is 353/152/29, approximately 12/5/1 Although there has been no record of the differences in language proficiency among the three different majoring groups of students, the researcher has applied this sampling principle to ensure the highest possible representativeness of the results

Second, the selection of participants also involved the principle of systematic

random sampling 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 clearly found in the table on the next page

Table 4: Participants in the interaction with native speakers of English

In order to collect data from this main group, the researcher needed help from two native speakers of English whose role was to interact and elicit as much talk from the student group as possible As clear as it is, a native speaker of English is a person who

speaks only English, or a person who learned another language later in life but still predominantly uses English as L1 Particularly, two natives in this study are American; one male and one female who are at the age of 21 and 22 respectively The relationship between the interlocutors was equal, as the interaction between the two was considered an informal sharing Each participant was to interact directly with one native speaker on the topic “Free time and part-time jobs” 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)

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

2.2 Data collection instruments

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, the data were collected from the students – native speakers direct interaction, questionnaires and interviews These three instruments aimed at finding answers to different research questions and supplemented each other in collecting data

2.2.1 Interaction task

The purpose of this research is to discover the state of DM use in conversations between Vietnamese learners and native speakers of English, from the side of the former Specifically, in order to have 54 extended conversations for the study, 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

In short, the student corpus is based on a 325-minute audio-recording of an aggregate of 54 individual students who directly interacted with native speakers of English This instrument is to find answers to the first and second research questions:

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?

2.2.2 Questionnaires

As the researcher would like to dig deep into the issue on the part of the students and the teachers, research questions 3 and 4 were included

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?

To respond to these two questions, questionnaire was taken as one of the data collection instruments in the research since it “can provide data economically and in a form that lends itself perfectly to the purposes of the study” if well-structured (Verma & Mallick, 1999: 117) Another important reason for the researcher‟s choice of the questionnaire lies in its ability to reveal a pattern among all the respondents‟ answers (Gillham, 2005: 166) The answers from the respondents vary from item to item, but when the data are treated as a whole, a pattern, for example a tendency among respondents to choose certain items, will be revealed Interpretations of the results and further implications can be made based on such patterns In this respect, the questionnaire has been far more helpful than other instruments since it allows the researchers to “collect a huge amount of information in less than an hour” (Dornyei, 2003: 9)

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 2A) Another set was carried out among the teachers of Speaking Skill in Division III - FELTE (see Appendix 2B)

The first set of questionnaires aimed to clarify the following points from the student group:

 Their English language learning backgrounds;

 Their perception towards the importance of DMs in speaking;

 Their evaluation of their own use of DMs in oral communication;

 Their own suggested way to acquire the use of oral DMs

The second set of questionnaires addressed the following points from the teachers:

 Their English language teaching backgrounds;

 Their perception towards the importance of DMs in speaking;

 Their evaluation of the students‟ use of DMs in communication;

 Their suggestions and recommendations on teaching DMs explicitly in classroom setting

2.2.3 Interviews

There was an interview schedule for the teachers (see Appendix 2C) 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-Unarguably, the exploitation of semi-structured interviews was advantageous as this type of interviews could bring about in-depth information and a wide range of responses from the interviewees (Hancock, 1998: 7) Furthermore, De Vaus (2002: 65) asserted that “in-depth interviewing can give the researcher insight into the meaning of behavior and attitudes expressed in questionnaires This can help make more intelligent interpretations of the patterns discovered in the analysis of questionnaire data” Accordingly, through face-to-face interaction, the interviewer could recognize the interviewees‟ attitudes towards the investigated issue “Real data” could then be guaranteed (Freeman & Long, 1991: 12)

To be more specific, the schedule is comprised of two parts The first part concerns the teacher‟s evaluation of their students‟ use of oral DMs The second part delves deeply into the teaching of DMs in classroom setting In other words, the following issues are to

be made clear;

 Reasons for the students‟ low frequency of the use of oral DMs;

 Whether DMs are taught explicitly in Listening/ Speaking lessons;

 Teachers‟ opinions towards the explicit teaching of DMs in lessons;

 Teachers‟ suggestions on how students can acquire the use of DMs

2.3 Data collection procedure

54 conversations were recorded thanks to the participation of two native speakers and 54 Vietnamese EFL learners Prior to their performance, consent forms were given to the students and they were notified that their performance would be recorded for a linguistic study Specific information about the investigation of DMs was not provided to ensure the reliability of the research

To collect as much data from the student group, the topics of the interaction should

be familiar to the students to increase the conversational commitment on the part of native speakers, as suggested by Moreno (2001: 132) Apart from that, in order to create a communicative environment in which DMs can be found, the topic should involve speech acts like explanation, clarification, persuasion, agreement and disagreement (Huang, 2011: 69) The topic that the researcher decided to use was “Free time and part-time jobs” During the interaction, the native speakers are expected to make questions (see Appendix 1) to obtain as much information from the students as possible, with the intention of enhancing the latter‟s participation

non-Generally speaking, the process of collecting data could be broken into four main phases as follows

 Phase 1

The initial phase was to make careful preparations for the data collection process including the designing of open-ended questions, survey questionnaires and the interview schedules for the teachers and students In any method employed, personal information of

all participants was ensured to be kept confidential and anonymous due to ethical reasons

As an important step in this phase, pilot interviews and questionnaires were also conducted with two voluntary respondents to produce the best final versions

In addition, regarding the direct interaction between the native speakers and ULIS students, contacts with the participants were built up to obtain their attendance confirmation Prior to the interaction day, the native speakers took part in a short „training‟

in which the aims and guidelines for the interaction were made clear Particularly, the natives were provided with the topic for discussion and a number of open-ended questions

to pose when the Vietnamese interlocutor seems silent

 Phase 2

The second phase involved the participants‟ performance in their interaction with either of the two natives Notably, the participants‟ performance was recorded so that the researcher could have detailed reference to consult when analyzing It is particularly important to note that the recordings could not be collected in a day or two; instead, they were gathered from time to time due to the nature of the interaction between two individuals

 Phase 3

Survey questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were conducted in this phase among the Vietnamese participants after the researcher had the permission from them All the information in this stage was confirmed to the respondents to be treated with the strictest confidentiality; henceforward, all participants felt willing and comfortable to participate in the process With regards to student survey questionnaires, the students‟ praiseworthy cooperation with the researcher resulted in an 83.33% return of 45 completed questionnaires Teacher survey questionnaires and interviews with the participation of 13 and 3 teachers respectively were also fruitfully conducted thanks to their highly supportive attitudes and assistance

 Phase 4

In this final phase, the data collection process was finished and the important data from the student corpus were transcribed and classified Occasional speech errors made by participants were not corrected; instead, they were transcribed as they had actually

occurred As for interviews, the parts including relevant information were fully transcribed As regards questionnaires, answers to close-ended questions were mathematically summed up to produce clear presentation and classification of data

2.4 Data analysis methods and procedures

After the data (i.e 54 speeches) were gathered, a discourse analysis was carried out

to recognize the DMs as communicative strategies Specifically, as a good amount of time was spent on dealing with the data collected from the student corpus, the most frequently-used DMs and their functions were revealed To support the analysis process, transcription conventions are used when examples are cited in the study Table 4 below lists the codes and conventions used in the excerpts to be analyzed in the study

Transcription conventions Codes Explanations

Punctuation A full stop indicates a completed intonation

unit

, A comma indicates a continuing intonation

unit

? A question mark indicates a question

Pause … Indicates a pause between or within an

utterance

Unintelligible <??> Means the transcriber cannot hear the

speaker

Interrupted utterance + Means the speaker is interrupted and does

not complete his/ her thought/ utterance

E.g.: A: I think I would like+

B: Right

A: +to teach

Overlapping speech [ ] When both speakers are speaking at the same

time, the words that occur at the same time are surrounded by brackets [ ]

E.g.: C: Can I have that [one]?

D: [Uh huh]

Table 5: Codes and conventions used in the study (Adapted from Müller, 2005: 281) After the first two research questions were adequately dealt with, the next two questions were treated Specifically, the information collected from the questionnaires and interviews was to find out further information about the participants‟ perspectives towards the use of DMs in communication and the teaching of DMs in speaking syllabus

All the collected data were classified according to the four research questions Noticeably, graphs and charts were made full use of to see the most common trends and patterns Besides, some of the teachers‟ and students‟ quotes from the questionnaires and interviews were cited when necessary to support certain points in the research

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The previous chapter has clarified the methodology applied in this study, particularly the descriptions and justifications of the choice of participants, the instruments and the data collection and analysis process In this chapter, all the data collected from the student corpus, questionnaires and interviews will be presented and discussed in detail Notably, analyses of the collected results are compared with the literature in the field to realize the similarities as well as the new findings on the research topic

Below are the data presented in accordance with the four research questions The discussion is also emerged in the data presentation, making the arguments more sharply deployed

The four research questions are repeated here for better overview of the issues to be covered in this chapter

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

include four items: well, you know, I mean, and like

In the data collected from the interactions between third-year ULIS mainstream English majors and native speakers of English, the aforementioned DMs were found in the former‟s discourse; yet, each DM was recorded with different frequency level The

following chart summarizes the number of occurrences of each investigated DM as produced by the students

Figure 1: Number of occurrences of some DMs used by third-year ULIS students

As can be apparently shown in the chart, 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 Justifications for this pattern will be provided later on in section 3.3

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 52.2% of the DMs

selected for her study including and, right, yeah, well, so, now, sort of, you know, actually,

see, say, and cos represented underused DMs Among these, common markers in native

speaker speech such as say, sort of, well, right, actually and cos had an extremely low or

even no occurrence at all in the student corpus (Fung, 2003: 92) Another study that shared