The effect of discourse markers on listening comprehension of EFL Iranian high and low proficiency Learners

This research was designed to investigate the effects of discourse markers on EFL Iranianlearners' listening comprehension. Fifty eight male and female students took a pre-test as aproficiency test first, 39 students out of 58 are needed. To gain this aim, a language proficiencytest, i.e., Nelson test will be given to the total participants. After calculating Mean and StandardDeviation, each person with +1SD above the mean will be assigned to high level of languageproficiency and each one with -1SD below the mean will be assigned to low level of languageproficiency. Then they were assigned to two experimental groups and a control group, twentystudents for high level proficiency of DMs group, nineteen students for low level proficiency ofDMs group and nineteen students for control group were selected. During four sessions of thetreatment, each experimental group worked on four listening passages taken from IELTS sample.The participants in two experimental groups were encouraged to think and notice meaningfullyto the DMs and their functions how concepts are linked in listening passages by DMs. Alongwith the experimental groups, the participants in the control group also worked on the differentfour listening passages. At the end, three post tests were performed in one session. Finally OnewayANOVA was used to analyze the results of the control and the two experimental groups’post- tests, and a significant difference was observed in the high proficiency experimental groupof DMs and control groups, but there was not observed any remarkable difference between thelow proficiency group and control group.