HOW DO UZBEK LEARNERS USE DISCOURSE MARKERS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING: A LEARNER CORPUS ANALYSIS

Discourse markers (DMs) are an essential element in the organization of spoken communication. The usage of DMs reflects not only linguistic competence among EFL learners but also their ability to manage spoken interaction skillfully. By founding and analyzing a spoken language learner corpus, this paper tries to study the Uzbek learnersʼ use of DMs in English speech. The study reveals such overuse, underuse and misuse patterns as: additive, causal, temporal, contrastive DMs. It concludes that the Uzbek learners rely heavily upon a limited set of markers. So they make free use of “And then” but avoid more nuanced markers like “However, when” or “Yet More importantly”. The Uzbek learners have a bias towards their own source language in matters of pause space, cohesive devices and repetition.