IMPORTANCE MARKING IN EMI LECTURES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

We focus here on how lecturers mark important information in their lectures, since being able to identify this is fundamental to the learning process (Benson 1989).

Previous research has focussed on importance markers by native speakers (NS) (e.g. Crawford Camiciottoli 2004; Deroey & Taverniers 2011, 2012; Deroey 2012). Our study expands this research to compare the use of lexicogrammatical importance markers in both NS and non-native speaker (NNS) lectures. Using a corpus of Physical Science lectures from Italy, New Zealand, the UK and Malaysia, we make a qualitative analysis of instances of importance markers in order to compare their use in both NS and NNS discourse.

In international academic contexts, both NS and NNS discourse needs to be actively taken into consideration when preparing training materials for EMI lecturers.

References

Benson, M.J. (1989). The Academic Listening Task: a case study. TESOL quarterly, vol. 23(3) 421-445.

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. Peter Lang, pp. 81–98.

Deroey, K. L. B. (2012). What they highlight is: the discourse functions of basic wh-clefts in lectures. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11/2: 112–24.

Deroey, K. L. B., & Taverniers, M. (2011). A corpus-based study of lecture functions. Moderna Sprak 105/2: 1–22.

Deroey, K. L. B., & Taverniers, M. (2012). Just remember this: Lexicogrammatical relevance markers in lectures. English for Specific Purposes. 31 (4) 221-233.