ORAL AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE MARKER UTILIZATION BY INTERMEDIATE IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS

Discourse markers (DM) play a significant role in the maintenance of cohesion. This study sets out with the aim of realizing the distribution of DMs in intermediate Iranian EFL learners’ writing and speaking, and also explores the attitudes of the learners towards using DMs. Sixteen intermediate EFL learners, from Danial Language School in Yazd, were recruited in the study through convenient sampling. Subjects were asked to answer 2 questions in written and oral forms. Attitudes of the participants toward using DMs were collected through interviews. The results of the chi-square test revealed that there was no significant difference between the proportions of the DMs used in participants’ speaking and writing; however, the learners were more willing to use elaborative DMs. Alternatively, the findings revealed that even though the learners were familiar with DMs, they were reluctant to take advantage of the full range of discourse markers tokens for fear of making mistakes.