engleski

Discourse Markers Like, Sort of and Kind of in the Spoken Discourse of Advanced L2 Students of English

This study explores the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the conversational discourse of non-native speakers of English. Specifically, it investigates the functions and positions of the DMs like, sort of and kind of in the conversations of Croatian speakers of English. The study investigates DMs in the conversations of first year university students of English. The subject group consisted of four volunteers - two females and two males. For every participant, two different speech events of about 15 minutes each were recorded. The speakers engaged in two casual, dyadic conversations. The participants were asked to talk as naturally as possible about a casual topic of their choice. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses show the pervasiveness of DMs at this capability level and their variety in use. Discourse like, sort of and kind of cover about 8% of the DMs used by the students in this study. Among them like is the most frequent and sort of is the least frequent. Variability has been noticed in the frequency distribution of these markers in the talk of individual students. Like most often occurred before a noun, sort of most frequently before a verb and kind of before an adjective. The multifunctionality of these markers has also been identified. Like was most often used as an approximator and kind of and sort of were most often used as compromisers.

discourse markers, like, sort of and kind of, non-native speakers of English

nije evidentirano