THE ROLE OF PRAGMATIC MARKERS IN ACADEMIC SPOKEN INTERLANGUAGE: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF A GROUP OF BRAZILIAN EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

!e present work addresses a group of university students of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) on how they use pragmatic markers in their oral productions. !e initial hypothesis was that there would be di"erences both in usage and form in comparison to native speakers. In order to verify our claim, we set o" to investigate two corpora: a learner oral corpus being compiled at the Federal University of Minas Gerais/Brazil and a sub-corpus from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE). While Brazilian students overuse items such as maybe and just, the data recorded in the UK displayed a more varied range of markers and multiword forms. Overall, the #ndings reinforce the importance of analyzing empirical data for a broader understanding of how native speakers and learners can di"er in their oral academic production. !e paper also sheds light on language teaching and learning in the academic setting from a pragmatic viewpoint.