Transcript Discourse Markers

Case Study of Bassemah
BY JULIE PETERS
GROUP B
Basic Background Information
 Born in Alexandria, Egypt on August 15, 1978
 Family is in high-middle class status: father is Ship
Architect Engineer (rare and highly-paid), mother has
degree in Literature (works for shipping company too),
and younger sister is a Communication Engineer.
 L1: Arabic with Egyptian dialect
 Relatively proficient in English
Educational Background
 Did well in all areas of academics
 Preferences for chemistry and math.
 Egyptians attend universities for free, but what they qualify
for is based on a score.
 Student’s grade for their last year of high school determines
their score.
 Her score = 85-something, needed 86 for pharmacy school
(chemistry).
 Qualified for engineering, which is also considered high, but
had absolutely no interest whatsoever!
 Chose accounting (math) and completed a 4 year degree
 Then worked 7 years in shipping industry (with father) as an
accountant.
Progression of Learning English
 Little to no exposure to English prior to 5th grade
 English class in middle school
 Once a week, like any other class
 Basics: grammar, past, present, vocabulary
 Opportunities to practice were only during class
 English during 3 years of high school
 Choice of other languages or art
 English during years at university
 None, accounting classes only
 Limited opportunities to practice English at work
Languages
 Egypt: mostly Arabic, Italian, English, and French
(influenced by tourism and manufacturing)
 Father: Arabic, English, French, and German
 Mother: Arabic, English, and French
 Sister: Arabic, English, and French
 Bassemah: Arabic, English, and French
Journey
 Before meeting husband: shipping accountant in Egypt
 Meeting husband: church, courtship, marriage at age 27, paperwork, gave birth to son in ’06.
 Arrival in 2006: husband’s perception of American’s culture, husband’s issues with speaking
English, husband’s level of fluency in English after 12 years, lack of socialization, Egyptian
church members and their level of fluency in English (after 15 years), her beliefs clashing with
her husband’s beliefs, abusive/drug addict (pharmacist) husband, no space for her belongings,
finds pictures and letters from previous wife and child, impact on English.
 Divorce in 2009: trials, husband’s ego -“knock me down”, “knows how important my son is”,
“he knows that if he took the custody, I would come begging him”, psychological evaluations
taken to combat his image (3 tests, 600 questions each), impact on English.
 Life goes on: accounting student to fill in the gap (U.S. does accounting differently than all
other countries), impact on son (ex-husband’s push for Egyptian school as well as views about
speaking Arabic—contradiction).
 23: 24 to 25:14 (audio on YouTube) Beginning on Line 52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8jnwRV62nM&feature=g-upl
Motivation and Attitude
 Instrumental motivation – “functional reason”
 Integrative motivation – “are interested in the people and culture represented”
 Resultative motivation – “learners who experience success in learning may be more,
or in some contexts, less motivated to learn”
 Intrinsic motivation – “involves the arousal and maintenance of curiosity”
Ellis, R. (1997), pp. 75-76
Strategies
“Studies have shown, not surprisingly, that successful learners use more
strategies than unsuccessful learners.”

Cognitive strategies – “are those that are involved in the analysis, synthesis, or
transformation of learning materials.” (eg. What’s up?)

Metacognitive strategies – “are those that are involved in planning, monitoring, and
evaluating learning.” (eg. prepositions and saying something wrong)

Social/affective strategies – “concern the ways in which learners choose to interact with
other speakers.” (eg. questioning for clarification, “know what I mean” discourse marker)
Ellis, R. (1997), pp. 77
The Overview of Errors
 Past Tense
 Discourse markers
 Comparative adjectives
 Conjunctions (coordinating and subordinating)
 Prepositions
 Morpho-syntactic
 Conjugation of auxiliary verb be
 Pronouns (relative and indefinite)
 Omission of verb
 Subject/verb agreement
 Pronunciation variation (possible L1 transfer error)
 Misplaced primary stress
Past Tense
The omission of tense marker/-ed/




Line 7 when she explained her ex-husband’s view: “…he does not like the culture here…it’s so ruin...”
Ruined would be the correct form.
Line 5: “I was pretty astonish…” instead of astonished.
Line 13: “… I stay here from two thousand and six up till two nine…” instead of stayed.
Line 37: “My ex-husband want put him in that school…” instead of wanted. It is also interesting that
here she not only omits the /-ed/, but she also omits the word that should come after wanted, which is
to.
The irregular form for past tense

Line 9: “and he got to…he just make me think we shouldn’t…” In looking at make, I could consider it
an omission error of /-s/ for the 3rd person singular verb. Instead though, I consider the past tense
form of got used just prior to this error. I presume from that evidence that she meant to have make in
its past tense form: made.
Research on Past Tense
“Thus, when learners begin to use past tense markers (either irregular
markers as in ‘ate’ or regular markers as in ‘painted’), they do not do so on
all verbs at the same time.”
“Thus, in the case of past tense, at any one time a learner may mark some
verbs correctly for past tense, fail to mark others at all, and overgeneralize
the regular –ed and the progressive –ing forms with yet other verbs.”
Ellis, R. (1997), p. 24.
Discourse Markers
Discourse Markers (38 times during 5-minute segment)










“Ya know” was used 6 times; it can be seen on Lines 4, 6, 17, 27, 59, and 85.
“Ya know what I mean” was used 7 times; it can be seen on Lines 5, 8, 29, 55, 59, 61, and
68.
“Like” was used 11 times; it can be seen on Lines 6, 16, 31, 38, 56, 70, and 71.
“Basically” was used 2 times; it can be seen twice on Line 17.
“Alright” was used 1 time; it can be seen on Line 30.
“Okay” was used 2 times; it can be seen on Lines 22 and 41.
“I mean” was used 6 times; it can be seen on Lines 31, 43, 60, 61, 68, and 69.
“I think” was used 1 time; it can be seen on Line 63.
“See” was used 1 time; it can be seen on Line 68.
“So” was used 1 time; it can also be seen on Line 68.
Research on Discourse Markers
“Three informal functions for discourse markers have also been designated. The
three informal functions are: (1) to fill pauses in conversation, (2) to act as
nervous glitches in speech, and (3) the markers have become part of our collective
lexicon (Davis, 1992). Unfortunately, very little academic research has
been done on the three informal functions of discourse markers. Two
questions in particular remain to be addressed by linguistic or communication
researchers: (1) how often are the markers used? and (2) are markers a conscious
of unconscious decision? Furthermore, the impact markers have on perception
and credibility has not been addressed. These areas are of keen interest because
discourse markers often function informally and are considered a part of the
human psyche and intellect (Schiffrin, 1987).” (Emphasis added)
http://www.nationalforensics.org/journal/vol22no2-3.pdf
References
Croucher, S. M. (2004). “Like you know what I’m saying: A study of discourse marker frequency in
extemporaneous and impromptu speaking”. www.national forensics.org/journal/vol22no2-3.
Ellis, R. (1997). Second Language Acquisition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Filler type: Discourse marker (DM). (2003). In Linguistic Data Consortium online. Retrieved from
https://secure.ldc.upenn.edu/intranet/Annotation/MDE/guidelines/2003/dm1.html
Shiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.