The Use of Discourse Markers in narrative by Chinese speakers of L2 European Portuguese

Abstract

In an attempt to examine the use of discourse makers by Chinese speakers of
Second Language (L2) European Portuguese (EP) in oral narrative production, the
current study is oriented by two research questions: (1) how is the frequency,
distribution and variety of the discourse makers used by Chinese speakers of L2
EP? (2) is L2 proficiency level a potential factor that affects the use of discourse
markers in narrative? On the basis of quantitative and qualitative analysis on the
empirical data collected from 13 Chinese learners of EP, the results reveal that
learners at a higher L2 level tend to produce more discourse markers in narrative,
especially the structuring discourse markers. However, when it comes to the variety
and distribution of this linguistic term, it seems that the richness of discourse
markers does not correlate positively with L2 level and that almost all these
expressions occur in the sentence-initial position.