Article published in:
New Approaches to English Linguistics: Building bridges
Edited by Olga Timofeeva, Anne-Christine Gardner, Alpo Honkapohja and Sarah Chevalier
[Studies in Language Companion Series 177] 2016
► pp. 213–249

Discourse markers in L2 English

From classroom to naturalistic input

| Université catholique de Louvain / FNRS

This chapter investigates how the context of acquisition, and more precisely the amount of naturalistic input received, may influence non-native speakers’ knowledge of English discourse markers. It considers three levels of analysis, from the more individual (foreign language learners having spent different periods of time in a target language country) to the more general (foreign language setting vs. official language setting), over an intermediate level of analysis comparing populations of foreign language learners from different countries. The corpus study carried out suggests that a higher degree of exposure to naturalistic language tends to have a positive impact on learners’ knowledge of discourse markers, resulting in more frequent use, better approximation of native speaker frequencies and, possibly, more fluent usage.

Keywords: target language input, acquisition context, discourse markers, English as a foreign language, English as a second language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Second language acquisition of discourse markers
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Data and methodology
  • 5.The use of discourse markers by learners with varying degrees of naturalistic input
    • 5.1Overall results
    • 5.2Length of stay in a target-language country
    • 5.3EFL-like vs. ESL-like environment
    • 5.4Foreign vs. institutionalised second-language varieties of English
    • 5.5A more qualitative peek
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 01 November 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.177.09gil
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