Part 4: Teaching Materials Reflection on Teaching Artifact #2: The Different Functions of the Discourse Marker well This

term paper was created in AL 6806: Using Corpora in the Language Classroom. It was completed at the end of the spring semester, in 2013. The term paper involved writing a literature review and a corpus analysis of a language phenomenon. Furthermore, we had to create a teaching unit covering about five hours of instruction. I chose to focus solely on the functions of well as a discourse marker. Discourse markers are unique to spoken discourse, and using them can help learners of English sound more fluent. The focus was only on the discourse marker well, since it can have so many different functions. The first part of my paper was a literature review exploring the different functions of well. The literature review revealed several different functions of well. The functions were that well could be used to mark delays, self-repairs, direct speech, and nonappreciative responses, such as disagreements or refusals. Furthermore, it could also be used to mitigate face threats, and frame discourse units such as direct speech, or frame a shift in focus or topic. The next part of the paper, aimed to analyze the functions of well in corpus. The corpus I used had 56 transcriptions of daily conversations and talk show interviews. In the analysis, all the functions mentioned in the literature review were confirmed, except for one. There were no cases of well being used to mitigate face threats. Based on this knowledge I created activities worth five hours of instruction.

The importance of teaching different functions of well as a discourse marker lies in the fact that it can help learners sound more fluent. Furthermore, discourse markers can help learners avoid being misunderstood. For instance, if learners do not use well to mark non-appreciative responses then they might come across as rude and abrupt. However, teaching the functions of well is a difficult topic, and should only be taught to students at a high skill level. Therefore, the activities I designed were meant for learners at a high intermediate to advanced proficiency level. Also, the teaching setting was EFL, more specifically Norwegian high school students at the age of 18. The goal of the designed teaching material was that students would be able to identify/recognize some of the different functions of well. One of the requirements of the course instructor was to include a teaching method called data driven learning. The purpose of this method is that students will explore data in order to discover patterns, rules, structures or functions of a language. I tried to apply this method to on of my activities. The task was that students would look through the corpus MICASE, and find seven examples of well used to mark self-repairs. However, this was not data driven learning, since I gave them a function of well up front. With data driven learning the students need to make the discoveries on their own. I therefore had to revise the task. In short, the task instead became to identify a function of well by looking through transcript data on MICASE. Writing this paper made me more aware of how complex discourse markers can be. I had no idea that well as a discourse marker could have so many different functions. This also makes them challenging to teach, and I believe they should be introduced to

learners at a high intermediate or advanced skill level. Although it can be difficult to teach students the different functions of discourse markers, they are still important. Discourse markers can help a learner sound more fluent, since they are unique to spoken discourse, and commonly used by successful speakers of English.