Recognizing Discourse Markers as One of the Essential Components for Assisting Students in Acquiring Natural English Communication

摘要

As can be seen today, English has been used in most countries in the world. However, not many of the countries use English as their first or second language including Indonesia. The countries still use English as their foreign language in which the language is not spoken in daily communication. It causes English in the countries is not used naturally. It can be seen vividly in English learning process in Indonesia. Many students do not really use English to talk to their teacher also friends. In the classroom, English teachers usually have their students to make up a dialogue. Sometimes, they do not indeed emphasize a context, even ask the students to create the dialogue freely. It often leads the students not to do the dialogue naturally then. One of the good ideas to assist the students in speaking English naturally is by recognizing discourse markers. Discourse markers are markers which can make messages delivered in a conversation developed and coherent. They can be words, phrases, and clauses. They also influence the flow of the conversation. By employing the discourse markers, statements that are uttered are smooth and easy to be grasped by the listeners. Therefore, this paper aims to explain to the readers, especially English teachers that recognizing discourse markers is beneficial for the students to achieve natural English communication.