Marcadores metadiscursivos, fluidez y participación conversacional en español L2 : La evolución de la competencia comunicativa durante la estancia en una comunidad de la lengua meta

Sammanfattning: This study investigates the acquisition and use of metadiscourse markers in learners/users of L2 Spanish and the role these markers play in the development of fluency and conversational participation during a five-month stay in Spain as exchange students of business administration.The study has been conducted in three steps. The first part focuses on the theory and categorization of metadiscourse markers, followed by an analysis of the use and development of these markers in learners of L2 Spanish. The second part deals with the categorization and operationalization of aspects of fluency and conversational participation that can be associated with the use of metadiscourse markers; followed by an analysis of these aspects in the performance of the learners. The third part of the study is a summary of the results obtained and a discussion of the relationship between the use of metadiscourse markers and the development of fluency and conversational participation.The data underlying the current study consists of a selection of 17 recorded conversations between learners of L2 Spanish and native speakers of Spanish taken from the AKSAM database. The conversations belong in two activity types: discussions and simulated negotiations. The selected sample has a duration of approx. 10 hours and comprises 87 683 words. The study focuses on nine learners who have been recorded at the beginning and at the end of their five month study-abroad stay.Results show that frequency of use of metadiscourse markers has increased considerably at the end of the stay in the majority of the learners under study. A qualitative development can also be found, through which the metadiscourse markers that characterize the learners’ L1 and/or interlanguage have been substituted by more target-like expressions. Furthermore, both their fluency and level of conversational participation have generally increased. Within this development, however, a notable individual variation can be found. The learners who show the strongest development as regards fluency and conversational participation are also found to exhibit the most salient development of metadiscourse markers. Since disfluency is reduced to a lesser degree in those participants who also exhibit a less developed use of metadiscourse markers, it is argued that the development of metadiscourse markers in the L2 learner runs parallel to the development of discourse skills, but also that acquiring an adequate use of metadiscourse markers helps developing these skills.