Overuse of the Discourse Filler, So in Micro-teaching Talks by Koreans

Abstract

The study investigates pre-service Korean English teachers" lecture talks in order to identify what aspects are problematic for them using the discourse marker, so. The speech data was collected from mock lectures by university students in Seoul, Korea. The study compared the frequency of so as a discourse filler by the Koreans with that by native English speakers in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. The results indicate that the Korean participants overuse so as a filled pause rather than as a discourse marker. Moreover, the study confirmed that the Korean speakers use so in an unnatural way, different from native English speakers. The author suggests that teacher training programs teach differentiation in the subtle meanings and functions of those discourse tools, via exposure to quality input; and that the programs also provide a variety of speech practice with appropriate use of discourse markers at the moment of performance.