The Use of Discourse Markers in EFL Students' Essay Writing

DOI

10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.47How to use a DOI?

Keywords

discourse markers; high grade; low grade; essay; coherence; cohesion

Abstract

This paper is aimed at investigating the use of Discourse Markers (DMs) in the essays of high grade and low grade Engllish Department Students of Wijaya Kusuma Surabaya University. As writing becomes the skill that the students have to master, it has become the main concern for lecturers including the elements of well-organized essay. One aspect which determines the students’ abiliy to construct good and well-organized essay is the use of DMs. They are lexical expressions which signal the relation of either contrast, implication, or elaboration between the interpretation of discourse segment 2 and the interpretation of discourse segment 1 (Fraser, 1998, p. 302). This qualitative research uses data collected from the essay of 23 students divided into 12 high grade (Hg) students and 11 low grade (Lg) students. The findings show that Hg students employed more DMs than Lg students in quantity and in variety. In fact, the essays composed by Lg students indicates the lack of coherence and cohesion which may be causd by their lack of applying discourse markers in their essays. This problem was caused by the students’ unfamiliarity to the use of these expressions in their writing and their difficulies in applying these expressions in their essays due to the lack of information from the lecturers and other sources. Therefore, it becomes the lecturers’ homework for not only teaching how to compose an essay but also introducing the DMs needed in those essays.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ribut Surjowati
PY  - 2018/08
DA  - 2018/08
TI  - The Use of Discourse Markers in EFL Students' Essay Writing
BT  - Proceedings of the Fourth Prasasti International Seminar on Linguistics (Prasasti 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 248
EP  - 251
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.47
DO  - 10.2991/prasasti-18.2018.47
ID  - Surjowati2018/08
ER  -