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An Introduction to Discourse Analysis - Journal Article Review [4]


Reviewing Articles under the Issue of Making Sense of Discourse and Developing Discourse Competence

Topic Title : The Use of Discourse Markers among Mandarin Chinese Teachers, and Chinese as a Second Language and Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners

Researchers: Pei-Shu Tsai and Wo-Hsin Chu

Source        : Applied Linguistics 2015: 1–29
Oxford University Press 2015
doi:10.1093/applin/amv057
http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/

Objectives  : Elaborating on the insights gained from past studies. The present study further analyzed the frequency and function of these markers produced by Chinese teachers, as well as CSL (Chinese as a second language) and CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners during online Chinese language courses.

Problem     :1. What is the relationship between the use of DMs and language learning?
2. Does the frequency of DMs reflect a Chinese learner’s verbal ability?
3. What are the pedagogical implications on language teaching specific to spoken discourse?

Theory     : Chafe 1982; Tannen 1985; Chafe and Tannen, 1987; Shiffrin 1987; Lenk 1998; Carter and McCarthy 2006 studied on the usage of discourse markers (DMs) among native speakers have shown that these devices act as elements that connect pieces of information, create cohesion throughout a conversation, and promote natural interaction among participants.

Fung and Carter’s (2007) examination of L2 learners’ production of DMs versus native speakers production of DMs is one of only a few of such studies.

Method     : Participants in the study were divided into three groups: CSL learners, CFL learners, and native Chinese speakers (teachers). Both of the groups learning Chinese were matched according to their areas of study and ages (between 20 and 30 years old); both groups consisted of college students enrolled in departments requiring Chinese proficiency.

Online distance Chinese courses were conducted once a week for this research. Computer-mediated distance learning was chosen for data collection with the understanding that it is only through the Internet that data can be collected from CSL and CFL simultaneously across distant geographic regions. Both groups of students participated in the online Chinese course, and a total of 220 min of video recordings were transcribed for further analysis. In the next stage, the target DMs, ranhou, na, nage, and shenme, were identified based on the context in which they were used, and coded according to their lexical or discourse functions by the researchers.

Quantitative method were conducted to the present study. Using A chi-square test measuring the frequency of DM usage between Chinese teachers and learners supported the observation that Chinese teachers produced more DMs than the learners. To statistically examine the differences in student talk time between individual students, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. For post-hoc comparisons, Bonferroni t-tests were conducted to control the statistical errors that occur in multiple comparisons, and Levene’s tests were performed to adjust for equality of variances.

Results      :

In a distance-learning Chinese language course, it is unavoidable that the teacher will speak more frequently than the students because the teacher needs to lead the course activities, as well as maintain the flow of conversation. On the other hand, the verbal ability of students also influences each individual’s spoken performance.

In terms of speaking turns throughout the courses, on average, the teachers produced more clauses than either the CSL or the CFL group. This observation was confirmed by an omnibus statistical analysis, F(2, 19) = 5.52, MSE = .11, p < .05, and by a post-hoc Bonferroni t-test between teachers and CSL learners, t(13) = 2.37, p < .05, and between teachers and CFL learners, t(10) = 2.17, p < .05. The difference between the CSL and CFL group was not significant, t < 1, suggesting that learners in general spoke less than the teachers during each turn. Therefore, to provide a solid basis for comparison of the overall use of DMs across the three groups of participants, DM frequencies were converted into comparable ratios by dividing the occurrence of DMs by the number of clauses and turns, respectively.

A further analysis on the frequency of usage of the four types of DMs among the three groups of participants was submitted to a two-way chisquare test, which showed that each of the three groups of participants preferred using different DMs, 2 (6) = 111.75, p < .001.

The Chinese teachers used na most frequently for topic transition. For example, the teacher said na before changing the conversation topic from the number concept in different cultures to the assigned group activity in the textbook.

Ranhou was the most frequently spoken DM by students in the CSL group. It was used to mark the speaker’s own conceptual sequence, The student used ranhou to connect the two statements, which reflected their own conceptualization of the relationship between them, showing that the second sentence was a further explanation of the first.

In contrast to the Chinese teachers and CSL learners, students in the CFL group preferred using shenme, but the word was not used for its discourse function. Instead, they used the word shenme for its lexical meaning, that is, asking questions. For instance, a student was reading an assigned text on the whiteboard. She stopped in the middle when she encountered a new word and used shenme to ask the teacher how to read the next character. The teacher answered, and she repeated the new word.

Conclusion     :

In the present study, verbal fluency was studied by measuring the frequency of DMs used in conversations. The analyses were accompanied by examination into how these DMs were used in the conversational context. In other words, the study also investigated the appropriateness and the extent to which DMs were applied in discourse. The results were compared among three target groups, namely, native Chinese speakers (teachers), CSL students, and CFL students. Finally, DMs were compared against other measures of verbal fluency to demonstrate that DMs can be identified as a useful index for reflecting a person’s verbal fluency.
The present study compared the frequency of use and functions of four Chinese DMs, ranhou, na, nage, and shenme, in conversations between native Chinese teachers and learners during online Chinese language courses.

Analysis of the data suggests that the frequency of appropriately used DMs reflects the richness of the content produced by the language user. Native Chinese speakers used DMs more frequently and appropriately, and Chinese learners living in a Chinese-speaking environment also used DMs more frequently in a wider range of appropriate circumstances than learners who studied Chinese as a foreign language in non-Chinese-speaking countries. Other measures of fluency, such as the number of false starts, were correlated with the number of instances of incorrect pronunciation.

The frequency of usage of verbal filler ranking from high to low was different across the participant groups. For both the CSL and CFL learners, the word ranhou was used with the highest frequency and was utilized for its discourse function more often than for its lexical meaning, while teachers preferred to use it for its lexical rather than functional meaning.

For Chinese teachers, discourse functions were the most commonly used for extending and developing the conversation topic.

Comments: 
In my opinion, this research is different from others. As we know that mostly research in discourse analysis use qualitative research approach, but this research uses quantitative research approach. Therefore, we can know the results of the research by paying more attention to the numbers. For me, this research can be a reference for conducting quantitative research. 

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