THE USE OF DISCOURSE MARKERS BY EFL STUDENTS IN ESSAY WRITING

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to identify the English discourse markers (hence, DMs) commonly used by university students in learning English as a foreign language and to find out their misuse in their essay writing. The subjects of this research were the fourth semester students of the English Language Education Department at a university in Banda Aceh. The data collected were 86 essays in two forms: argumentative and descriptive. The results of the document analysis showed that the students did make use of contrastive markers, elaborative markers, and inferential markers in their essays. The markers but, and and so were found to be the most used DMs by the students. Furthermore, abundance of inappropriate uses of the DMs in their sentences were also found; these include overuse or redundancy, misinterpreted relation, and mistranslation (L1-L2). Considering the importance of DMs in discourse, writing and comprehension, EFL students should be taught about English DMs from their early introduction to English at school to help them develop better understanding of DMs and their appropriate uses in English writing.

Keywords: Discourse Markers, English, Writing, EFL Students