2 authors: Eman Awni Ali University of Jordan 7

Aims of the study

The present study analyzes the use of DMs in expository essays written by Jordanian students with different levels of English language proficiency. It attempts to discuss the effect of English language proficiency on the use of DMs. Another objective of this study is to assess the students' awareness of the stylistic peculiarities of DMs. The study will attempt to answer the following question: How does the level of proficiency of students at the University of Jordan affect their use of DMs in written discourse?

3. Literature Review

Fraser (1996) uses constructed examples for analyzing DMs within a grammatical-pragmatic framework. A discourse marker is defined by Fraser (1996, p.186) as “an expression which signals the relationship of the basic message to the foregoing discourse.” He holds the position that DMs constitute a functional rather than a syntactic class. Accordingly, coordinate and subordinate conjunctions (and, or, but, since…), adverbs (consequently, furthermore...) and prepositional phrases (above all, on the other hand…) are the major sources of DMs. In contrast to Schiffrin (1987) who claims that DMs contributes to the local coherence of discourse, Fraser believes that these markers can contribute to the local or global coherence.
Fraser (2009) identifies three functional classes of DMs. The first class is contrastive discourse markers (CDMs) which signal that the message conveyed by the discourse segments they introduce contrasts directly or indirectly with the prior segments. ‘Nevertheless’ in (I didn't study hard. Nevertheless, I passed the exam) is an example of this functional class of discourse markers. Elaborative discourse markers (EDMs) constitute the second subclass of discourse markers. EDMs indicate that the information contained in the discourse segments that host them is an elaboration on the information represented by prior segments. ‘Above all’ in (You must study hard. Above all, you mustn't fail school exams) illustrates the use of EDMs. The third subclass of discourse markers is that where the discourse segment they introduce “provides a basis for inferring” the prior segment (Fraser, 2009, p.9). ‘Thus’ in (It is raining today. Thus, we aren't going shopping) is an instance of the discourse markers identified by Fraser as inferential discourse markers (IDMs).
Martinez (2004) employs Fraser's taxonomy to carry out a study that investigates the use of DMs in written discourse by non-native speakers of English. Thus, 78 Spanish university students are asked to write expository compositions on a topic that the researcher supposed to be familiar to them by virtue of studying it at school and university. The researcher concludes that Spanish students use a variety of DMs with different degrees of frequency. She points out that the discourse markers which are exhibiting the highest degree of frequency in the students' writings are the elaborative markers. The second most frequently employed type of DMs is contrastive markers, followed by causative markers and inferential markers. Martinez relates the high frequency of elaborative DMs, such as (and, moreover and furthermore), to the fact that expository compositions often require elaboration which might be signaled by the use of such markers. She adds that the students who exhibit the most frequent uses of DMs are the ones who score the best results in their writing task.
The study also reveals that there is a positive relationship between the qualities of the students’ compositions and the variety of the DMs used by them. The highly-rated compositions generally “tended to present a larger variety” of elaborative, inferential and contrastive markers (Martinez, 2004, p.76). For example, the contrastive markers that are used in the highly-rated compositions include “(but, however, although, whereas, nevertheless, on the contrary, on the other hand, in contrast (with/to this/that), whereas, instead (of (doing) this/that), despite (doing) this /that, in spite of (doing) this/that)” (Martinez, 2004, p.76). The poorly- rated compositions, on the other hand, tended to present a redundant use of the contrastive markers ‘but’ and ‘however’.
Another study that uses Fraser's (1999) taxonomy to investigate the employment of DMs in compositions is conducted by Jalilifar (2008). The researcher contributes her choice of Fraser's taxonomy to the fact that “it conforms to written discourse and it seems to be the most comprehensive classification in written discourse” (Jalilifar, 2008, p.115). Jalilifar asked 90 Iranian university students to write descriptive compositions once a week for 8 weeks. She came to the conclusion that the elaborative markers are most frequently used class of DMs. Jalilifar additionally emphasizes that there is a significant relationship between the frequency of DMs and the quality of the compositions.

Following Fraser’s (1999) taxonomy of DMs, Rahimi (2011) carries out a study to examine the use of DMs by Iranian EFL learners. The researcher analyzes the DMs used in expository and argumentative essays written by 56 English-major Iranian students. The findings show that the most frequently employed type of DMs in the students’ essays is elaborative markers. Rahimi (2011, p.73) ascribes the high quantity of elaborative markers to the fact that “both expository and argumentative writing in general require explanation of ideas.” Moreover, the elaborative marker ‘and’ is found to be the most frequent DM in both essay types. The second most frequent DM is ‘or’, followed by ‘so’, ‘but’, ‘also’, ‘for example’ and ‘because’ (Rahimi, 2011, p.72). The results further indicate that the Iranian students are found to “resort to more textual and discoursal devices in argumentative texts than in expository texts” (Rahimi, 2011, p.74). As for the relationship between the use of DMs and the quality of the expository and argumentative compositions, the results reveal that “the use of DMs cannot be a significant predictor of the writing quality” (Rahimi, 2011, p.74).

Šimčikaitė (2012) analyzes the use of spoken DMs in academic writing. This study is based on the belief that DMs are “sensitive to discourse type” (Šimčikaitė, 2012, p.27). Thus, using informal DMs in an academic essay might “contribute to the overly oral tone of the whole essay” (Šimčikaitė, 2012, p.27). The researcher relies on Carter and McCarthy's classification of DMs. Carter and McCarthy (2006) distinguish a class of DMs which are used frequently in informal oral discourse such as (by the way, anyway and you see). They argue that these markers are sometimes used to “imitate a spoken style” in written discourse (Šimčikaitė, 2012, p.28). The data for this study are collected from a corpus of academic essays written by Lithuanian learners of English and compared to a corpus of native English essays.
The results indicate that the Lithuanian learners use spoken DMs more frequently than their native counterparts. Šimčikaitė suggests that the most likely explanation is that the Lithuanian learners are not familiar with the “stylistic peculiarities” of DMs (Šimčikaitė, 2012, p.27). This could be attributed to the learners' course books which “lack stylistic suggestions of discourse markers” (Šimčikaitė, 2012, p.32).
Unaldi (2013) examines the use of the DMs ‘I think’ and ‘in my opinion' which are distinctive features of speech contexts in argumentative essays written by Turkish EFL learners. A comparable corpus of essays written by native speakers of English is employed as the base line for this analysis. The results indicate that the intermediate EFL learners overuse these spoken markers as opposed to their native counterparts. Unaldi argues that overusing these markers is an indication of “a transfer of spoken register into written by EFL learners which means that they try to write like they speak” (Unaldi: 583).
Asassfeh, et al., (2013) analyze quantitatively and qualitatively the use of logical connectors (another label for DMs) in essays written by 146 students who are studying English at one of the Jordanian universities. The researchers investigate the frequency and variety of the use of logical connectors (LCs). They found that the Jordanian EFL learners tend to “incorporate a higher number of LCs compared to what the context requires” (Asassfeh, et al., 2013, p.19). In other words, the subjects show a tendency for overusing or overloading their essays with LCs. Furthermore, the subjects are observed to use repeatedly and redundantly a restricted set of LCs. The LC ‘and’, for instance, represents 80% of the additive LCs that are employed by the students, whereas ‘because’ and ‘so’ stand for 93% of the occurrences of causative connectors (Asassfeh, et al., 2013, p.23-24).

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