Discourse Markers in Indonesian EFL Classroom Interaction: A Mixed-Method Study ofenior High School English Teachers in Riau
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31849/wwfk1e72Keywords:
Discourse Markers, EFL Classroom Interaction, A Mixed-Method , Corpus-based analysis , discourse analysisAbstract
Discourse markers (DMs) are pragmatic resources that organize spoken discourse and help teachers manage classroom interaction. Although previous studies have documented DM frequency in EFL teacher talk, relatively little work in Indonesian and Riau secondary-school settings has integrated corpus-based frequency patterns with a subsequent functional analysis of the same classroom discourse. This study therefore investigates the types, frequency, and communicative functions of DMs used by English teachers in Senior High Schools in Tambusai Utara, Riau, Indonesia. Ten English teachers participated, and classroom interaction was audio-recorded and transcribed for corpus analysis. The quantitative phase identified and normalized DM tokens using AntConc and Fraser’s (1999) procedural-function criterion; the qualitative phase then selected high-frequency DM instances from the corpus for contextual functional interpretation using Fung and Carter’s (2007) framework. The corpus contained 1,108 DM tokens in approximately 21,974 words of teacher talk. Elaborative markers were the most frequent category (37.09%), followed by inferential (27.71%), topic change (26.62%), and contrastive markers (8.57%). The most frequent individual markers were okay (470), and (308), and so (203). Their uses covered structural, interpersonal, referential, and cognitive functions, including topic transitions, continuity, consequence, summaries, comprehension checks, and response elicitation. The results describe how DMs are distributed and function within the observed teacher talk; they do not directly establish effects on student learning or interactional competence. The findings suggest that teacher education can benefit from explicit awareness of DM functions, contextual selection, and interactional use.
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