THE IMPACT OF PRACTICING DISCOURSE MARKERS ON INTERMEDIATE IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS' LISTENING COMPREHENTION ABILITY

Students increasing involvement with different english language institutes indicates their overall difficulties with comprehending and recalling information from listening contents. It has also been observed that, in general, very little attention is given to the development of listening skills in L2 courses. To tackle this issue, a quasi-experimental research was conducted to investigate the impact of practicing discourse markers on the listening comprehension ability of iranian intermediate EFL learners. For this purpose, two classes of intermediate male learners of english at shokouh institute in rasht (male branch) were utilized, each including 18 students, one experimental and the other one control group. A pre-test of listening comprehension from IELTS was used to homogenize the participants' proficiency levels. In the control group, the usual techniques of listening comprehension were practiced, while the experimental group was exposed to practicing prespecified discourse markers. After a 6-hour session of treatment, all subjects were given a post-test of listening comprehension, using the IELTS's audio script. The results of the study through an independent samples t-test, and a one-way ancova indicated that practicing discourse markers has statistically significant effect on iranian EFL learners' listening comprehension ability.