MUESTRA INTENCIONAL

This section examines the discourse marker use of so in the textbook database and compares that to the findings from the SLC. In the textbooks, there were occurrences of so functioning as a discourse marker. When analysing the textbooks year by year individually, it was found that so was not represented in the first year of introducing Saudi students to English, i.e. the sixth year of primary school. A similar result was found for the textbook in the first year of intermediate education. The representation of so was introduced from the second year of intermediate school onwards until the third year of secondary, which is the last year before college. The total number of the discourse marker uses of so was 75 tokens performing different functions. Following are some examples from the textbooks which represent all functions introduced to students at school.

There were occurrences of so as a discourse marker. Example of so indicating a result is given in the following excerpt:

(40) Noura: Guess what we did last week, Sara? Sara: What?

Noura: We rented a beach house and stayed there for the weekend. Sara: Great! What did you do?

128

Noura: Well, I walked on the beach, watched the sunset and went sailing. Oh, and I collected many nice shells, as well.

Sara: How nice!

Noura: Yes, and my brother took part in a jet ski race. Sara: So, you really had fun?

Noura: Yes, I did. What about you? I’m sure you had a good time last weekend, as well.

(Second year intermediate, p. 22)

Another discourse marker function found in the textbooks was so marking a main idea unit. The following example occurred in the third year intermediate textbook.

(41) Student 1: I wish I had Bill Gates’ brains? Student 2: Why?

Student 1: If I had his brain, I'd go to an institute of technology. Student 2: There're so many. Which one do you want to go to?

Student 1: I'd love to go to the one in India. It's famous for information technology. Student 2: Then you'd become someone special in the future.

Student 1: It sounds fantastic, but it seems impossible.

Student 2: No, it's not. I just read about a Saudi boy who invented a computer programme in mathematics. So you can make your dream come true if you study hard.

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Regarding so introducing a new sequence and so marking transition, there was no occurrence of them in all the seven textbooks. So introducing a turn was used once in the spoken data and interestingly was found only once in all the textbooks. It occurred in the third year secondary textbook:

(42) John: Ahmad, are you any good at fractions? Ahmed: Not bad, Why?

John: Well, what’s half a half? Ahmed: A quarter.

John: O.K. So what do you get if you add a half and a quarter?

(Third year secondary, p. 2)

Thus, it can be said that the ratio of the occurrence of the discourse marker so in the textbooks is far lower than in the SLC. Given the popularity of so in spoken discourse, it is rather surprising that the writers of textbooks seem to make little effort to explain how it is used in ways that will help students comprehend it and become more familiar with its use. There was no separate lesson dedicated to the function of so, i.e. how it can be used. Even though the representation of so as a discourse marker in the textbooks is fairly scarce, Saudis still use them to fulfil all the functions used by NNs. This might relate to the availability of this discourse marker in Arabic.

Saudi speakers use the discourse marker so in its various functions regardless of the under- representation of this marker in the textbooks to which they have been exposed. I argue that this has to do with the similarities between so in English and fa in Arabic. For example, functions of fa as a marker indicating a result were found in Saeed and Fareh (2006). They argue that the following example of the Arabic connective fa signals a result:

130 (43) هيف عدبأف حرسملا دمحأ بحأ

‘ahabba ‘ahmadu l-masraha fa ‘abdaca fih. Ahmad loved theatre and so he excelled in it.

(Saeed & Fareh, 2006, p. 20, example 1)

Therefore, I argue that the Saudi participants are able to use the functions of the English discourse marker so in their speech even though they have not explicitly been taught the functions at school. I also argue that this does not undermine the importance of teaching the functions of this discourse marker. In fact, teaching the functions of so would help in raising the awareness of how to use so appropriately and enable language learners to employ it in their speech. It is worth bearing in mind that in my data, there were eight participants who did not use so whatsoever.