The Role of Discourse Markers in Listening Comprehension

Abstract

This thesis entitled “The Effect of the Discourse Markers in Listening Comprehension” in reference to iBT TOEFL Standard is an effort made to find out the role of such markers in listening comprehension of the masters' level students. This current research is an experimental type of study by its nature for which the students of masters' level under TU, Nepal were selected. The researcher chose three institutes viz. Institutes of Medicine, Engineering, and Science and Technology (Physics) and three faculties viz. Faculties of Education, Management, and Humanities and Social Sciences. The students majoring English from FOE and FOHS and others were selected as the respondents. Random sampling procedure was adopted for the data collection. A listening test of the two versions of the same texts; one with discourse markers and the second without discourse markers for two times was used as the tool for data collection. The texts were recorded and the same listening texts were played in the cassette player and the respondents ticked the best answers after they listened to them. First, the texts without discourse markers were played and the same test with the same questions was administered second time for the texts without discourse markers in the interval of 15 days. It has been found that the role of the discourse markers in the listening comprehension of the listening texts is more helpful than the texts without such markers. The converted score of the respondents in iBT TOEFL has shown the low level of the students of master’s level in listening skill. The research consists of four chapters where chapter one introduces the study in terms of general background, literature review, objectives and the significance of the study. Chapter two deals with the methodology, which had been adopted to carry out this study where it consists of source of data, population of the study, sampling procedure, and tools for data collection, process of data collection and limitations of the study. Chapter three shows the analysis and interpretation of the collected data. In this chapter, the elicited data are analyzed and interpreted both statistically and descriptively. Chapter four presents the findings of the study and practical recommendations on the basis of the findings of this study. The references and appendices are the concluding part of this study.