The effects of English-medium instruction on the use of textual and interpersonal pragmatic markers

Abstract

This study examines a semi and a full English-medium instruction (EMI) undergraduate program offered at a Catalan university in order to measure its effect on the students’ oral output. Specifically, it tackles the acquisition of pragmatic markers (PMs) by measuring four variables, the overall frequency of use, the variety of types, the use of textual PMs, and the use of interpersonal PMs. Oral data were collected via a monologue and an interaction task. The study is cross-sectional with 39 full-EMI and 33 semi-EMI participants in 2nd and 3rd year of study plus 10 native speakers. PM use was chosen for analysis due to the important role they play in communicative competence. Results show a significant increase in the overall frequency and variety of types of PMs used from year 2 to year 3. The full-EMI group used PMs at a significantly higher frequency and wider variety when compared to the semi-EMI group, neither group reached baseline levels for use of interpersonal PMs, and both groups displayed a higher use of textual PMs compared to the NSs.

A study on the functional uses of textual pragmatic markers by native speakers and English-medium instruction learners

“…Upon an extensive review of the research carried out to date on PMs, and following (Ament, Pérez & Barón, 2018), eight different sub-functions seem to be clearly identified within the textual function: causal markers, contrastive markers, continuation markers, elaboration markers, opening and closing markers, sequential markers, topic shift/digression markers, and summary/conclusion markers (see Table 1). These are the functions identified and used for analysis of PMs in the present study.…”

Pragmatic Markers Produced by Multilingual Speakers: Evidence From a CLIL Context

“…This finding provides support for the perception of textual and interpersonal PMs as different categories at the oral level. They represent different communication strategies which should be considered independently, as has been done by numerous scholars (Ament et al, 2018;Fung & Carter, 2007).…”

“…A functional approach to coding PMs was followed, taking into account the multifunctionality of PMs; that is, the fact that one same graphic PM may have different functions according to the context. We categorized each PM as either textual or interpersonal following the categorization proposed by Ament et al (2018), and included two additional functions of interpersonal PMs found in our corpora: fillers and general extenders. On the one hand, fillers included I don't know, like and it's like in English, pues, es que, como, en plan, no sé, and ya in Spanish, and pues, no sé, es que and vull dir in Catalan.…”

“…Because of this, different functional approaches to PMs have been proposed. Some view PMs as serving multiple functions, from speech management to politeness (Fischer, 2006), others argue that PMs have either discursive or interpersonal functions (Ament, Pérez-Vidal & Barón, 2018;Andersen, 2001;Brinton, 1996), while numerous researchers only distinguish the interpersonal nature of PMs, differentiating between PMs and discourse markers (Romero-Trillo, 2012). The present study adopts the approach to PMs as performing two main functions: textual and interpersonal.…”

“…definitely, I think) and between the speaker and the hearer (e.g., listen, that's right). Only a few studies have compared the use of textual and interpersonal PMs by FL students, revealing higher amounts of textual PMs than of interpersonal ones (Ament et al, 2018;Fung & Carter, 2007), probably because of the fact that textual markers are more present in the FL classroom instructional input.…”