Discourse Markers Used by Students in Nonfomal Education

The aim of this research was to investigate 1) the types of discourse markers used by students in nonformal education, 2) to evaluate the discourse markers realized by students in nonformal education, and 3) to elaborate the reasons of occurrence of discourse markers used by students in nonformal education. The data source of this research were students in Harford Institute Sekip Branch, there were 16 students taken from 4 different levels and they were taken by using purposive sample proposed by (Sugiyono, 2012:126). This research was conducted in descriptive qualitative method. The data of this research were words which consisted of discourse markers which were collected by using audio recorder and some list of questions that were used to interview the students. Then, the data were analyzed by using interactive model of Miles, Huberman, and Saldana. The results discover that response form markers mostly applied by students, followed by hesitator marker, and it reveals that ‘hmm’ is applied as a response form marker besides hesitator marker, ‘loh’ and ‘lah’ also found in this study as typically Indonesian discourse markers. The realization of discourse markers occurred in 3 positions those are initial, medial, and final, which mostly occurred in the initial position, the reason of discourse markers used by the students based on the topic being discussed, it is also found as function to fill the pause in the speech, as part of habits, unpreparedness and nervousness, and difficulties in what to say.