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The analysis of discourse markers in oral narratives of speakers of Spanish as a foreign language encounters the obstacle of the absence of definitions and classifications that contemplate all the relevant elements in discourse marking. The aim of this paper is to present a proposal for a comprehensive analysis of discourse marking mechanisms (DMMs) applicable to unplanned oral narratives of learners of Spanish as a foreign language. This proposal is articulated around functions and types of mechanisms. From a functional point of view, this proposal for MMD analysis starts from the macro-function «discourse marking», which includes three functions: (i) ideational/propositional (e.g. addition, contrast, cause, etc.), (ii) textual/structural (e.g. onset, planning pause, reformulation, etc.) and (iii) interpersonal/modal (e.g. phatic, doubt, justification, etc.). Regarding the types of mechanisms, this proposal includes the traditionally considered discourse markers as well as other types of mechanisms, which according to their syntactic and discursive behavior can be divided in sentence-level mechanisms (nexus, adjuncts, constituent modifiers) and discourse-level mechanisms (lexical formulae, general extenders, interjections). This system of analysis is applied to a sample of oral narratives produced by native speakers and learners of Spanish as a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]