A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF DISCOURSE MARKERS IN ENGLISH FOR IRAQ CURRICULUM

This paper aims to outline the most commonly prominent features used in determining a lexical item as a discourse marker in terms of pragmatic perspectives. In this study, 14 Iraqi teachers of English from different secondary schools which have been individually interviewed and asked about their familiarity with discourse markers and, whether they were training their students to identify them as a skill or not? The samples of conversations are randomly selected from the English for Iraq curriculum, particularly, third intermediate book. It has been shown that secondary school teachers of English have been unable to recognize discourse markers nor to know their functions in conversation. All of the 14 informants have shown their in comprehension of discourse markers. Therefore, the study has come up with certain recommendations that are supposed to solve this lack of knowledge in teaching English as a foreign language in Iraq