Marking importance in lectures: Interactive and textual orientation

in Applied Linguistics (2013)

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical markers of important lecture points and proposes a classification in terms of their interactive and textual orientation. The importance ... [more ▼]

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical markers of important lecture points and proposes a classification in terms of their interactive and textual orientation. The importance markers were extracted from the British Academic Spoken English corpus using corpus-driven and corpus-based methods. The classification is based on the markers’ constituents and cotext. Most markers are interactively oriented towards the content (e.g. the point is) or listeners (e.g. you should remember) rather than the speaker (e.g. I should stress) or speaker and listeners jointly (e.g. I want you to notice). Many content-oriented markers also have secondary listener orientation (e.g. these are the things to take home). As regards their textual orientation, markers typically occur before the highlighted point. The analysis aims to reveal how the realizations of this metadiscursive feature reflect key characteristics of the lecture genre and suggests factors that may affect the efficacy of importance marking. The findings are useful for lecture listening and note-taking courses, lecturer training, and educational research assessing the efficacy of such discourse organizational cues. [less ▲]

Relevance markers in lectures

Scientific Conference (2012, May 30)

Relevance markers organise discourse by establishing a hierarchy of importance of lecture points and present the lecturer’s attitudinal evaluation of these along a ‘parameter of importance or relevance’ ... [more ▼]

Relevance markers organise discourse by establishing a hierarchy of importance of lecture points and present the lecturer’s attitudinal evaluation of these along a ‘parameter of importance or relevance’ (Thompson & Hunston, 2000, p. 24). This paper surveys the lexicogrammatical devices used to mark relevant and less relevant points in lecture discourse using the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus. Helping students distinguish between important and less important discourse (e.g. the point is; remember; ignore that ‘cos it’s totally irrelevant) is arguably an important aspect of effective lecture delivery. However, we know surprisingly little about how relevance is marked in lectures as very few corpus linguistic studies have been concerned with this issue (a notable exception being Crawford Camiciottoli 2004). The authentic markers derived from the research presented here can be used in experimental research on listening comprehension and note-taking as well as in the design of courses for English for Academic Purposes or lecture training. The paper summarises findings of two research projects. The first is on markers which indicate that particular points are relatively important or relevant. The approach here was multi-pronged. In a pilot study of four lectures, two researchers independently identified lexicogrammatical devices which appeared to highlight points to refine the inclusion criteria for relevance markers. Next, a further 36 lectures were searched manually for relevance markers and the concordances for the identified lexemes were then retrieved from all 160 lectures using Sketch Engine. Further candidates for relevance marking in the immediate co-text of these concordances and in a BASE frequency word list of words were also searched. Additionally, a few lexemes and patterns from existing pertinent corpus linguistic research were searched. For the second study on markers of lesser relevance, we restricted ourselves to a manual search of 40 lectures and retrieved potential indicators of lesser relevance from all 160 lectures. Markers of relatively important points could mostly be classified according to their main element into adjective, noun, verb and adverb patterns. Quantification showed verb patterns to be predominant, followed by noun patterns. The verb pattern V clause (e.g. remember slavery had already been legally abolished) and the noun pattern MN v-link, a metalinguistic noun with a link verb (e.g. the point is) are the predominant types of relevance markers. Markers of lesser relevance were classified according to how the lecturer signaled less important points. This was achieved through indications of message status (e.g. the detail is not pertinent), references to assessment (e.g. it won’t come up on an exam paper), topic treatment (e.g. I don’t want to drag you through all of this), teacher knowledge (e.g. I can’t quite remember), and class management (e.g. don’t copy it down). Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2004). Audience-oriented relevance markers in business studies lectures. In Del Lungo Camiciotti, G., & Tognini Bonelli, E. (Eds.), Academic discourse: New insights into evaluation (pp. 81-98). Bern: Peter Lang. Thompson, G., & Hunston, S. (2000). Evaluation: An introduction. In Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse (pp. 1-27). Oxford: OUP. [less ▲]

What they highlight is ...: The discourse functions of basic wh-clefts in lectures.

in Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2012), 11(2), 112-124

This paper reports findings from a study on the discourse functions of basic wh-clefts such as what our brains do is complicated information processing in 160 lectures drawn from the British Academic ... [more ▼]

This paper reports findings from a study on the discourse functions of basic wh-clefts such as what our brains do is complicated information processing in 160 lectures drawn from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus. Like much linguistic research on this academic genre, the investigation is motivated by the need to gain a better understanding of language use in lectures to aid effective English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course design. To this end, the composition of the wh-clauses was analysed for its main constituents (subjects, verb phrases and modality) and the clefts were grouped according to their apparent main function and subfunction within the lecture discourse. The results show that basic wh-clefts mostly serve to highlight aspects of content information and there was also disciplinary variation in their use. Implications for EAP course design are discussed. [less ▲]

The important point is: highlighting information in lectures

Scientific Conference (2011, July 19)

Helping students recognise the important points of a lecture is an essential feature of effective lecture delivery. One way in which this can be achieved is by metadiscursive devices signalling relevance ... [more ▼]

Helping students recognise the important points of a lecture is an essential feature of effective lecture delivery. One way in which this can be achieved is by metadiscursive devices signalling relevance, or ‘relevance markers’ (using a term from Hunston 1994). A better understanding of the use of such lexicogrammatical devices would benefit not only educational research on note-taking and lecture comprehension but also provide information that can be used in the design of English for Academic Purposes courses for non-native speaker lecturers and students. However, there have been very few corpus-informed discussions of relevance markers (Crawford Camiciottoli 2004, 2007 and Swales 2001 being notable exceptions); instead educational studies on discourse organization in lectures include very few (corpus-derived) examples (e.g. Kiewra, 2002), while linguistic studies either remain silent on the source of their examples of discourse organizing expressions (e.g. Chaudron & Richards 1986) or focus on lexical bundles (e.g. Biber 2006). Using 160 lectures from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, this study contributes to the mapping of the realizations of relevance markers in lectures. A list of relevance markers was compiled from a manual search of 40 BASE lectures and from examples provided in Crawford Camiciottoli (2004, 2007). These were then quantified in all 160 lectures using Sketch Engine. The identification and quantification of these markers was rendered difficult because it often required studying discourse far beyond the concordance line and because some of the most common devices (e.g. remember; the point is) are polysemous. Furthermore, in the case of corpus linguistic research such as this the analysis of evaluation is also hampered by the lack of information about the lecturer’s intentions, the students’ knowledge, and non-verbal communication. The investigation revealed a wide variety of patterns based on nouns (e.g. the important point is; that’s the bottom line), verbs (e.g. remember; let me just emphasise) and adjectives (e.g. it is important to note; this is absolutely crucial). These could further be classified in terms of their orientation as speaker-oriented (e.g. that's the point i want to make; it’s worth mentioning), listener-oriented (e.g. this is important to remember; it's worth knowing), content-oriented (e.g. so what's crucial is; that's the critical point) or as having joint listener-speaker orientation (e.g. we need to bear in mind; these are the things i want you to go home with). Finally, it is interesting to note that findings largely confirm those of previous research on the conversational features of this genre (e.g. Biber 2006), the extremely common use of the thing/point/question is being a case in point. REFERENCES Biber, D. (2006). University language: a corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Chaudron, C. & Richards, J. C. (1986). The effect of discourse markers on the comprehension of lectures. Applied Linguistics, 7 (2), 113-127. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2004). Audience-oriented relevance markers in business studies lectures. In Del Lungo Camiciotti, G. and Tognini Bonelli, E. (Eds.). Academic discourse-new insights into evaluation. (81-98). Bern: Peter Lang. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2007). The language of business studies lectures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hunston, S. (1994). Evaluation and organization in a sample of written academic discourse. In Coulthard, M. Advances in Written Text Analysis. (191-218). London: Routledge. Kiewra, K. A. (2002). How classroom teachers can help students learn and teach them how to learn. Theory into Practice, 41 (2), 71-80. Swales, J. M. (2001) Metatalk in American academic talk: the cases of point and thing. Journal of English Linguistics, 29 (1), 34-54. [less ▲]

Ignore that 'cause it's totally irrelevant: marking less important information in lectures

Scientific Conference (2011, April 12)

This study uses the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) lecture corpus to map the ways in which lecturers help students distinguish between important and less important discourse. More specifically ... [more ▼]

This study uses the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) lecture corpus to map the ways in which lecturers help students distinguish between important and less important discourse. More specifically, this investigation is innovative in its focus on metadiscursive signals of the relative “unimportance” of particular discourse. Together with highlighting devices, such cues arguably benefit note-taking and the on-line processing of lectures. The findings from this analysis should therefore be of interest both to EAP practitioners and educationalists trying to improve listening, note-taking and speaking skills in the context of lectures. A subcorpus of 40 BASE lectures was read to identify potential lexico-grammatical cues of less important discourse. Using Sketch Engine, these were then quantified in the whole corpus, along with the negative forms of highlighting devices drawn from Crawford Camiciottoli 2007. Interestingly, the subcorpus contained few explicit lexico-grammatical markers of less relevant discourse (e.g. never mind that's by the way; this isn't the main thing to take away with you) or references to assessment (e.g. this isn't something you will be examined on). Instead, it tended to contain indications which in the lecture context can sometimes be taken to convey that certain topics are less important. These mainly included statements about how a topic will be treated in terms of time spent on it (e.g. I’ll briefly touch upon...) or the level of detail (e.g. i'm not going to talk in detail about this) as well as directions for note-taking (e.g. you don't need to copy this down). These qualitative findings were borne out in the quantitative analysis. Implications for EAP syllabus design will be discussed. [less ▲]

A corpus-based study of lecture functions

in Moderna Språk (2011), 105(2), 122

Despite the importance of lectures in higher education, relatively little is known about lecture discourse. To contribute to our understanding of this genre, this paper presents a comprehensive overview ... [more ▼]

Despite the importance of lectures in higher education, relatively little is known about lecture discourse. To contribute to our understanding of this genre, this paper presents a comprehensive overview of lecture functions, i.e. what lecturers use language for. The functional overview is based on a qualitative analysis of lectures from the British Academic Spoken English Corpus and findings from existing research. Six main functions were identified: informing, elaborating, evaluating, organizing discourse, interacting and managing the class. This functional analysis of the lecture genre should be of interest to both genre analysts in the field of academic discourse and English for Academic Purposes practitioners. [less ▲]

The important point is: highlighting information in lectures

Scientific Conference (2010, June 18)

Using the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) lecture corpus, this study investigates what lexicogrammatical devices lecturers employ to signal important lecture discourse and how this varies across ... [more ▼]

Using the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) lecture corpus, this study investigates what lexicogrammatical devices lecturers employ to signal important lecture discourse and how this varies across disciplines and lecturers. The research aims to inform the design of academic speaking and listening courses for lecturers and students who are non-native speakers of English. Lexicogrammatical patterns listed as ‘relevance markers’ in Crawford Camiciottoli (2007) (e.g. ‘that is the key question’, ‘the thing is’) were extracted from the corpus of 160 lectures. Findings largely confirm those of previous research on highlighting in lectures and the conversational features of this genre (Biber 2006; Crawford Camiciottoli 2004, 2007; Swales 2001). In addition, a subcorpus of forty lectures was searched for other relevance markers (e.g. ‘remember’, ‘i want to emphasize this’) and their frequency in the BASE corpus was subsequently determined. Conclusions highlight recurrent patterns as well as idiolectic and disciplinary variation. The use of these findings to English for Academic Purposes teaching is also discussed. Biber, D. (2006). University language: a corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2004). Audience-oriented relevance markers in business studies lectures. In Del Lungo Camiciotti, G. and Tognini Bonelli, E. (Eds.). Academic discourse-new insights into evaluation. (81-98). Bern: Peter Lang. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2007). The language of business studies lectures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Swales, J. M. (2001) Metatalk in American academic talk: the cases of point and thing. Journal of English Linguistics 29 (1): 34-54. [less ▲]

What they highlight is: the discourse functions of basic wh-clefts in lectures

Scientific Conference (2009, July)

As part of a study of lecture functions in general and highlighting devices in specific, this paper presents the findings of an investigation into the discourse functions of basic wh-cleft clauses in a ... [more ▼]

As part of a study of lecture functions in general and highlighting devices in specific, this paper presents the findings of an investigation into the discourse functions of basic wh-cleft clauses in a corpus of lectures. These clauses, such as What our brains do is complicated information processing, are identifying constructions which background the information in the relative clause (What our brains do) and present the information foregrounded in the complement (complicated information processing) as newsworthy. Corpus-based studies of this construction to date have mainly described its function in writing (Collins 1991, Herriman 2003 & 2004) and spontaneous speech (Collins 1991 & 2006). From his examination of wh-clefts in speech and writing, Collins (1991: 214) concludes that ‘the linear progression from explicitly represented non-news to news offers speakers an extended opportunity to formulate the message’, while Biber et al (1999: 963) note that in conversation, speakers may use this construction with its typically low information content as ‘a springboard in starting an utterance’. With regard to academic speech, Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas (2003) found that basic wh-clefts are particularly effective in conference presentations to highlight the New and that their apparent ‘underlying presupposed question’ (p. 57) adds a dialogic dimension to monologic speech. All these features suggest that wh-clefts may be a useful in lectures, which are typically monologic and mainly concerned with imparting information. So far, however, studies on the function of these clefts in lectures have generally focussed on the function of part of the wh-clause as a lexical bundle (Biber 2006, Nesi & Basturkmen 2006) and mostly discussed its role as a discourse organising device. For the current investigation, a corpus of 12 lectures drawn from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) Corpus were analysed. This yielded 132 basic wh-clefts, which were classified for their main discourse functions based on the presence of certain lexico-grammatical features, the functional relationship between the clefts and their co-text and an understanding of the purposes of and disciplinary variation within the lecture genre. Four main functional categories thus emerged: informing, evaluating, discourse organizing, evaluating and managing the class. These functions of wh-clefts and their relative frequency are discussed and related to lecture purposes; incidental findings on their co-occurrence with pauses and discourse markers are also touched upon. The study of this highlighting device in a lecture corpus thus aims to contribute to our understanding of what happens in authentic lectures and how this is reflected in the language. References Biber, D. (2006). University language: a corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad, & E. Finegan (1999). The Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman. Collins, P. C. (1991). Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in English. London: Routledge. Collins, P. C. (2006). It-clefts and wh-clefts: prosody and pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 1706-1720. Herriman, J. (2003). Negotiating identity: the interpersonal functions of wh-clefts in English. Functions of Language, 10 (1), 1-30. Herriman, J. (2004). Identifying relations: the semantic functions of wh-clefts in English. Text, 24 (4), 447-469. Nesi, H. & Basturkmen, H. (2006). Lexical bundles and discourse signalling in academic lectures. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11 (3), 283-304. Rowley-Jolivet, E. & Carter-Thomas, S. (2005). Genre awareness and rhetorical appropriacy: manipulation of information structure by NS and NNS scientists in the international conference setting. English for Specific purposes, 24, 41-64. [less ▲]

Corpus-informed EAP syllabus design: a study of lecture functions

Scientific Conference (2008, November 22)

Increasing student and lecturer mobility along with the spread of English as an academic lingua franca (Mauranen, 2006) means a growing number of university lecturers in Europe are delivering at least ... [more ▼]

Increasing student and lecturer mobility along with the spread of English as an academic lingua franca (Mauranen, 2006) means a growing number of university lecturers in Europe are delivering at least some lectures in English. Well-designed English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses can help lecturers whose first language is not English in meeting this challenge and findings from corpus linguistic research on authentic lectures are invaluable in informing decisions about the development of such courses. However, a comprehensive corpus-based account of language use in English language lectures does not exist, although recent publications by Biber (2006) and Crawford Camiciottoli (2007) constitute significant contributions to such a description. This paper aims to add to our understanding of what language is used for in lectures by providing an overview of language functions (e.g. interacting, evaluating, organizing discourse, class management) as related to the reported purposes of lectures (e.g. knowledge transfer and the socialization of students into disciplinary communities). This functional framework is based on a manual inspection of British lectures using qualitative methods, with larger stretches of speech being assigned to particular functional categories on the basis of lexico-grammatical features, an understanding of the text and generic knowledge (Dudley-Evans, 1994). Biber, D. (2006). University language: a corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2007). The language of business studies lectures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dudley-Evans, T. (1994). Genre analysis: an approach to text analysis for ESP. In Coulthard, M. (ed.). Advances in written text analysis. (pp. 219-228). London: Routledge. Mauranen, A. (2006). Spoken discourse, academics and global English: a corpus perspective. In Hughes, R. (Ed.). Spoken English, TESOL and applied linguistics. (pp. 143-158). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. [less ▲]

Douglas Biber. University language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers.

in Applied Linguistics (2007), 28(4), 624-627