Investigating the Effectiveness of Discourse Markers in Enhancing University EFL Students’ Listening Comprehension of Academic Lectures

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the effective role of discourse markers in enhancing EFL students’ listening comprehension of the lectures. A case study was conducted on EFL students, Sudan. The study has adopted the experimental and descriptive statistical methods to analyze the collected data. The tools which the researcher used to collect data are pretest and posttest for EFL students and a questionnaire for University English teachers. Then, the data has been analyzed by using (T. test & SPSS) programs. The sample of this study were (90 males and females) of EFL students, Karary University and (45) university teachers. Accordingly, the study has arrived at a number of findings, among them are: Discourse markers play an effective role in enhancing listening comprehension of academic lectures in EFL classes, and Exposing different categories of discourse markers like macro and micro types enable students’ ability to cope with content information of the lectures. Moreover, the researcher has mentioned a number of recommendations, among them are; EFL students have to be aware of the significant values of discourse markers as an effective discourse genre in academic listening comprehension, and also lecturers should consider the effective role of discourse markers in simplifying the academic lectures of EFL students. Finally, the researcher has suggested topics for further studies such as; investigating the reasons behind EFL students’ poor performances in tests and examinations related to the understanding of the lectures’ contents.