A Study on Pragmatic Discourse Markers okay, so, like in Korean English Learners' Spoken Corpus (KELSC)

A Study on Pragmatic Discourse Markers okay, so, like in Korean English Learners' Spoken Corpus (KELSC)

The study aims to investigate Korean English learners' usage of pragmatic discourse markers in their impromptu speech. Korean English Learners' Spoken Corpus, abbreviated as KELSC, is the main data source for analysis(Jung, 2021). To analyze the features of pragmatic discourse markers in KELSC, three focal pragmatic discourse markers(PDM) okay, like, and so are selected and analyzed by using WordSmith 7.0(Scott, M. 2016) and Lancsbox 6.0(Brezina et al., 2021). The findings indicate that three focal PDMs okay, like, so are not appearing more frequently in the higher levels of learners, unlike previous studies. Instead, the intermediate levels of B1 and C1 used two focal PDMs, okay and like the most, respectively. However, the lowest A1 learners rarely used the focal PDMs in their speech. Two PDMs okay and so are used as a co-occurring pattern in level C while so and they have a shared collocate in level A.