Oral proficiency and pragmatic marker use in L2 spoken Spanish: The case of pues and bueno

• We present a corpus-based analysis of pragmatic marker use in learner Spanish.
• Proficiency is significantly related to overall frequency of pragmatic markers.
• Pragmatic markers are used for wider range of functions by high proficiency learners.

This paper presents a corpus-based examination of pragmatic marker use in Spanish as a foreign language. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the frequency and seven functional differences in the use of pues and bueno in the oral examination of 46 participants using the Computer Assisted Screening Tool (CAST) online test. The participants were adult (average age 22) non-native speaking examinees at two levels of language proficiency. The study investigated whether examinees’ proficiency level would influence the pragmatic markers’ rate of occurrence and variety of functions.Frequency measures of pragmatic markers were obtained from examinees rated at two levels of proficiency: ‘full’ or ‘fail’.1 A discourse analytic approach was then employed to examine the discursive functions of pragmatic markers. The quantitative results showed that proficiency level was significantly related to the overall frequency of use of the focal markers, with the ‘full’ group tending to use them more frequently than the ‘fail’ group. Qualitatively, the study found that higher proficiency speakers used both pragmatic markers for a wider range of functions than their lower proficiency counterparts.The discussion considers the implications for raising learner awareness of pragmatic marker contributions to perceived oral fluency and pragmatic capacity.