Susan Thompson, University of Liverpool

EAP teaching materials frequently emphasise the important role of metadiscourse (sometimes referred to as ‘signposting’ language) to signal organisation in spoken academic texts such as lectures and presentations. Whilst such metadiscourse is clearly extremely important, I would like in this paper to consider the possible complementary role of intonation in signalling the organisation of academic monologues. Drawing on an analysis of a small corpus of authentic academic presentations and lectures, I will discuss the use of both lexical and intonational signals of organisation, attempting to characterise how academic speakers can draw upon both these resources to help the audience form a coherent mental ‘map’ of the overall talk and how its parts are interconnected. I will briefly analyse samples of academic monologues presented in published EAP teaching materials, and compare the findings with those for my own corpus. I will end by suggesting ways in which teaching activities focusing on the role of intonation in signalling discourse organisation might usefully be incorporated into EAP listening and speaking skills courses. Handout.

Nick Endacott, University of Stirling

Much extensive and revealing work has been carried out on the representations of “other voices” and their messages in discourse in a variety of genres, particularly in Research Articles, in Medical Discourse, and in General non-specific Discourse. However, little work has as yet been done on the representations of “other voices” in academic lectures. Using the Hard – Soft and Pure – Applied clines devised by Becher (1989) to categorise academic discourse, this paper attempts to build on and develop a small part of an earlier investigation into the representations of “other voices” in lectures by Endacott (1999) by examining and comparing the different choices made regarding firstly specific reporting verb lexical choices, and secondly related reporting verb tense choices, in a corpus of six Hard-Pure lectures (approximating to the so-called Natural Sciences and Mathematics) and six Soft-Pure lectures (approximating to the so-called Humanities and Social Sciences). Using Hyland’s (2000) modified version of Thompson and Ye’s (1991) system for the categorisation and description of reporting verbs, this paper will report highly significant differences in both the incidence of and the types of reporting verb used between the two corpuses, with the Soft – Pure corpus exhibiting a much higher incidence of and greater variety of reporting verb types. Significant differences were also observed in the associated tense choices made with the reporting verbs, with choices seeming to be made according to speaker attitude to the currency or truth status of reported information rather than anything else. This conflicts with the findings of Selinker et al, who maintain that report verb tense choice is determined primarily by discoursal aspects. The paper concludes by arguing that the enormous inter-disciplinary differences observed are a strong argument for the use firstly of authentic materials for EAP listening skills training, and secondly for the use of discipline-specific groups.

Tan Bee Tin, University College Chichester

The presentation examines the role of addition and repetition in generating what counts as valuable educational knowledge and ideas in divergent group discussion tasks. First, it considers the nature of valuable educational knowledge required in divergent tasks as opposed to convergent tasks. It is argued that the requirement or goal of divergent tasks is different from that of convergent tasks. Although justification, truth and accuracy of knowledge are important features of valuable knowledge required for the successful completion of convergent tasks, these are not sufficient for divergent tasks. Instead, novelty, originality and creativity are important features of valuable knowledge and ideas required in divergent tasks. The second part of the presentation examines the cumulative effect of additive framing in generating 'new significant' ideas (or 'original' ideas) in divergent tasks. It is argued that repeating and adding similar ideas have a role in constructing valuable knowledge in divergent tasks. Ideas that are repeated and added can combine and escalate into something significant. Handout.

Paul Wickens, University of Warwick

This paper is part of a broader study which puts forward a critical analysis of the discourse of government funded computer based learning (CBL) materials which have been introduced on undergraduate courses at UK universities.

In this paper, I focus on a comparison of the pedagogic interaction in the CBL materials for law produced through the government funded Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) and undergraduate legal seminars. Proponents of CBL materials claim that they are constructivist in their pedagogy in that they are interactive, self-paced and student-centred in contrast to more ‘traditional’ genres such as lectures and text books. More specifically, the producers of the TLTP materials for law, which form the basis of this study, claim that the materials to some degree mimic the interaction in seminars. The paper presents a comparative analysis of the discourse of the interaction in these two genres to see whether these pedagogic and discursive claims are valid.

The paper will relate the introduction of the CBL materials to the major upheavals in UK Higher Education over the last two decades and will suggest that their introduction represents a significant shift in the pedagogic orders of discourse of UK HE towards a market-oriented pedagogy (Bernstein 1990).

Tim Kelly, University of Warwick

The Listening to Lectures CD-ROM is the first in the EASE (Essential Academic Skills in English) series of academic software for overseas students and the first video-based multimedia cd-rom for EAP (English for Academic Purposes). The development of the disc involved the digital filming of over sixty authentic lectures in many disciplines. Twenty-five academic departments and research centres in the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities faculties at the University of Warwick took part in the project. The cd-rom has been designed primarily for non-native English speakers, although there is scope for use by native speakers lacking experience in listening to academic English.

The cd-rom has six units. There is a unit on the openings of lectures, one on structure and organisation, two units on functions (such as defining, classifying, referring to sources etc.,) one on significance and attitude, and the final one on argumentation. Each unit contains over twenty exercises almost all of which are based on video clips from lectures. Exercises concentrate on listening skills, note-taking skills and also vocabulary development. Feedback is given to students making both wrong and right answers. There is a scrapbook, in which students can copy, paste and edit text, and a dictionary, which is cross-referenced to video clips. The cd-rom contains extracts from lectures across the curriculum - focussing on language features which are common to different disciplines - and so it offers a window onto university life and academic English unavailable in conventional classroom-based courses. We might add that a lecture is a visual as well as an aural medium of education: as such text and audio based courses alone are highly unlikely to do the lecture justice.

The essential difference between this and other EAP listening courses however is not so much in the novelty of the medium as in the breadth of the data and its centrality in the development of the project. Extracts were chosen and materials created with primary regard to the data we had gathered, rather than prior literature and language teaching theory. Though we found in our review of the literature areas of overlap between theory and the contents of our corpus, the emphasis was skewed. Hence there was a good deal of refocusing of attention, and areas that have received little or no attention in the past were often given centrality in the cd-rom - always as a result of their prominence in our corpus. Authenticity was a key concept in development of the cd, both in terms of the authenticity of the data (real lectures) and the authenticity of tasks: in so far as it is possible users (students) have to replicate those tasks that they would perform in the real life situation of attending a lecture. During the presentation I will discuss some of the features of the disc and show some video clips and disc pages.

The Listening to Lectures CD was specially commended for its “exceptionally high quality in the field of educational technology” at the European Academic Software Awards 2000.

Andrew Preshous, Solihull College

Relatively little systematic, data-driven research has been carried out on the spoken discourse that occurs in academic seminars. Based on a small-scale study undertaken at The University of Warwick, this paper examines the discourse features of student contributions in academic seminars paying particular attention to eliciting acts. It also investigates the extent to which characteristics vary according to different seminar 'types'. Implications for EAP pedagogy are considered and possible directions for materials development proposed. Handout.

Joan McCormack, University of Reading

This presentation will look at the academic Listening material which has been recently developed at the University of Reading, by Beverly Fairfax and John Trzeciak. This title completes the ‘English for Academic Study Series’ used on many pre-sessional courses in the UK.

A brief look at the theoretical basis of the material will be followed by a description of how the book is structured, and ways in which the material itself can be exploited, The material, together with a comprehensive Teachers’ guide, enables students to practise the type of listening skills they need for successful study in English medium higher education.

Gerard Sharpling, University of Warwick

The aim of this paper is to examine some of the different formats which university seminars take and how students can best be equipped to deal with these formats. It will identify some gaps in present EAP teaching materials on seminar skills, and will suggest some ways in which teaching materials can be designed to reflect more closely and authentically the reality of the seminar situation. It will conclude by evaluating the extent to which seminar skills are teachable.

Sheena Gardner, University of Warwick

Taped oral feedback on student papers is not uncommon in general writing courses where its benefits, particularly for non-native speakers and particularly during the drafting and revision stages, has been documented (e.g. Allan 1991, Hyland 1990, McAlpine 1989 and Patrie1989). It was decided to experiment with taped oral feedback on MA assignments in order to investigate whether similar benefits accrued.

This paper analyses the nature of advice and suggestions for improvement given by two tutors each to two students whose papers received A and C grades. The feedback is analysed according to the strategies used in taped as compared with written feedback to explore the nature of the discourse. For example, the role of modulation and explicit vs implicit and subjective vs objective proposals (Halliday 1994) is examined.

The results suggest that not only does taped oral feedback provide, on average, seven times more feedback than comparable written feedback (by the same tutors on similar assignments), but there is also a wider range of strategies used to give advice and suggestion, and the discourse is more personal; clearly directed to the student audience.