Describing the use of discourse markers by ESL learners in writing

Abstract

This research paper describes the use of discourse markers (henceforth DMs) in paragraph writing by English as second language (ESL) learners who were enrolled in a writing class. 25 diploma level students from Landscape Architecture programme participated in the study. The main objective of the study was to investigate the use of DMs in paragraph writing by these learners. 50 paragraphs written by the participants were scrutinized and the DMs used in each paragraph were recorded. The DMs used by the participants were classified into four categories; a) Contrastive Markers (CDMs); b) Elaborative Markers (EDMs); c) Implicative Markers (IDMs) and d) Temporal Markers (TDMs). It was found that the participants use Elaborative Markers (73%) the most followed by Temporal Markers (13%), Contrastive Markers (8%) and Implicative Markers (6%). There is a weak linear relationship (r = 0.007) between the variety of DM used and the scores awarded to the paragraphs and a weak non-linear relationship (r = -0.004) between the total number of DMs used and the scores awarded to the paragraphs. It was concluded that the students had overused the high frequency EDMs such as 'and' and 'because' and had misused some DMs in their writing. The study concluded that EFL learners tend to use more limited and redundant sets of DMs in their writing due to their low English language proficiency.

Discourse marker in descriptive essays: A study on junior high school students

“…Of the seven class categories, the words 'at this / that time' and 'then' are the most frequently used by participants in connecting between propositions that state the time sequence in their descriptive essays. The findings of this study contrast with previous findings, which found that temporal DM 'then' and 'now' are most often used in academic written languages for L2 English users (Ab Manan & Raslee, 2017;Dumlao & Wilang, 2019). Apparently, this difference occurs because the characteristics of academic writing are different from descriptive writing.…”

“…Figure 1 shows that DM sequence distance (2567) occupies the highest position followed by elaboration (1063), temporal (677), contrast (553), comparison (406), reason (348), causal (265), conclusion (241), and examples (234). This finding is different from the finding of the previous result (Dumlao & Wilang, 2019;Ghanbari, 2016;Jalilifar, 2008;Martínez, 2004;Manan & Raslee, 2017;Rahimi, 2011). All of these researchers report that DM elaboration is the most dominant DM used by students in their writing compared to others.…”

Discourse markers in academic and non-academic writings of Thai EFL learners

“…Writing, as a cognitive process that requires a writer to generate ideas and thoughts and position them together into a text (Nunan, 2003), has been commonly recognized by numerous scholars as a demanding task for ESL and EFL learners (Ab Manan & Raslee, 2017;Aidinlou & Mehr, 2012;Arindra & Ardi, 2020;Asprillia & Hardjanto, 2020;Dülger, 2007;Modhish, 2012;Norrish, 1983;Prasetyawati & Ardi, 2020;Sharndama & Yakubu, 2013;Tadayyon & Farahani, 2017) for the reason that they need to "draw upon different grammatical, cognitive, and communicative knowledge" (Tadayyon & Farahani, 2017, p. 133). In line with Prommas and Sinwongsuwat (2011), even English native speakers judge writing as the most problematical language skill among the four because of various essential components, such as word choices, grammatical errors, and overall organization patterns (Dumlao & Wilang, 2019), need to be considered by writers.…”

Scrutinizing English Discourse Markers in Efl Students’ Writing Production

“…Elaboration on the studies of discourse markers as conducted by (Ab Manan, 2017;Alsharif, 2017;Ghanbari, Nasim., Dehghani, Tahereh., & Shamsaddini, Mohammad Reza, 2016). Ab Manan (2017) he described the use of discourse markers by ESL learners in writing.…”