The Effect of Teaching Pragmatic Discourse Markers on EFL Learners' Listening Comprehension

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of teaching pragmatic discourse markers on EFL learners listening comprehension of Iranian Advanced EFL learners. For this purpose, 50 Male and Female learners of English in the Payam-Noor University of Songhor Branch participated in this study whose major was English Translation. For the purpose of teaching discourse markers, fourteen sessions were allocated. After an intervention period of twelve weeks, where the experimental group received strategy training in recognition of discourse markers in Audio-texts ( short stories level 6), experimental and control groups again were tested through multiple choice questions in post-test stage, and their results were quantatively compared. Based on  analysis and description of data, results showed that the two Experimental and Control groups had a performance difference from each other in post-test and pre-test of this study. So multiple choice questions analyses provided developmental patterns of EFL participants with a listening comprehension proficiency increase. In the meantime, further research seems to be necessary to test the findings of this study and to determine whether materials and instruction used by the students to recognize and interpret discourse markers in academic content lectures bring about a higher level of listening comprehension.