A Comparative study of the Use of Discourse Markers in Spoken Narratives by Teenager EFL Learners in Persian and English

Discourse markers (DMs) constitute one of the several ways of performing the illocutionary act of acknowledging conversational discourse. The study of discourse markers types and functions has been of much interest to several applied linguists. However, the comparison between the use of discourse markers by L2 learners’ narrations in L1and L2 has not been appropriately studied yet. The main purpose of this study was to explore the types and frequency of DMs in Persian and English oral production by Iranian teenager EFL learners and to compare and contrast types and frequency of DMs used by Iranian teenager EFL learners in Persian and English. In so doing, 20 female Iranian teenagers were selected based on their scores on the Oxford placement test. They were met and interviewed and asked to narrate the events in the picture stories in both English and Persian. Their oralproductions were recorded. Finally, the voices were transcribed verbatim and DMs were highlighted. The DMs were coded in terms of their function in line with Fraser’s (1999) model. Types of DMs in English and Persian were identified and the frequencies of each were counted. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (Chi-square). The results indicated that Iranian teenagers used 8 types of discourse markers while producing narrations orally in English: filled pauses, adding, illustrating, contrast, sequencing, comparison,cause and effect, and time. On the other hand, the participants used only four types of DMs in Persian oral productions. Results also showed that the differences between the type and frequency of some of the discourse markers were statistically significant (p<0.05). The findings have theoretical and practical implications for contrastive linguists, language teachers and practitioners, as well as material developers

Keywords:

discourse markers , spoken narrative , EFL learners , teenagers , comparative study