Modality and Code Glosses to Transition from Academic Written to Oral Discourses

Authors

  • Ricardo Nausa Universidad de los Andes

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v24n01a02

Keywords:

academic discourse, English for academic purposes, oral presentations, essays, code glosses, modality

Abstract

This article presents the results of a pilot study carried out in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) class for PhD programs at a private university in Bogotá. The study sought to identify the mechanisms to change the content of academic essays to present them in oral presentations (OPs) to a multidisciplinary audience, and how such mechanisms mark differences of performance in the OPs. To identify the mechanisms of transition from written to oral mode, a discourse analysis comparison of eight parallel pairs of texts was performed. Changes to the expression of modality and the inclusion of code glosses were the mechanisms used to make the transition. These mechanisms helped students express contents in engaging and easy-to-process ways. The analysis of mechanisms includes the linguistic resources to modify sentences, their pragmatic appropriateness, and their grammatical correctness. This paper ends outlining some implications and limitations, and perspectives for future research.

|Abstract
= 469 veces | PDF
= 358 veces| | HTML
= 38 veces|

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Ricardo Nausa, Universidad de los Andes

Ricardo A. Nausa T. holds a bachelor's degree in Philology and Language from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics to TEFL from Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. He is currently a PhD student in the program of Applied Linguistics and English Language in the University of Birmingham. He is also a professor in the IPD (inglés para doctorados) program at Universidad de los Andes. His research interests include academic writing and oral presentations, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and the teaching of EAP.

References

Aguilar, M. (2008). Metadiscourse in academic speech: a relevance-theoretic approach (Vol. 317). Peter Lang.

Aguilar, M., & Arnó, E. (2002). Metadiscourse in lecture comprehension: Does it really help foreign language learners? Atlantis, 14, 7-21.

Alessi, G. (2005). The Use of Metadiscourse in EAP Presentations by Native Italian Speakers. Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, 28, 179.

Al-Issa, A. S. & Al-Qubtan, R. (2010). Taking the Floor: Oral Presentations in EFL Classrooms. TESOL Journal, 1(2), 227-246.

Alwi, N. F. B., & Sidhu, G. K. (2013). Oral Presentation: Self-perceived Competence and Actual Performance among UiTM Business Faculty Students. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 90(0), 98-106.

Anderson, K., Maclean, J., & Lynch, T. (2004). Study speaking (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Aull, L. L., & Lancaster, Z. (2014). Linguistic markers of stance in early and advanced academic writing a corpus-based comparison. Written Communication, 31(2), 151-183.

Author. (2015). Syntactic Mechanisms in the Transition from Academic Written to Oral discourses: Performance Differences in an EAP course (Unpublished doctoral essay). University of Birmingham.

Authors (2011). Informe de la investigación: El desarrollo de un currículo para la escritura de inglés nivel posgrado, según las necesidades y habilidades de los estudiantes (Proyecto IPD). Internal document. Universidad de los Andes.

Bamford, J. (2005). Subjective or objective evaluation? Prediction in academic lectures. In Elena Tognini-Bonelli and Gabriella L.Camiciotti (eds.). Strategies in Academic Discourse, Florence: John Benjamins Publishing,16-29.

Bankowsky, E. (2010). Developing Skills for Effective Academic Presentations in EAP. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 22(2), 187-196.

Barton, E. L. (1993). Evidentials, argumentation, and epistemological stance. College English, 55, 745-769

Basturkmen, H., & von Randow, J. (2014). Guiding the reader (or not) to re-create coherence: Observations on postgraduate student writing in an academic argumentative writing task. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 16, 14-22.

Biber, D., Grieve, J., & Iberri-Shea, G. (2009). Noun phrase modification. In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English. (pp. 182-193). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.

Bondi, M. (2005). Metadiscursive practices in academic discourse: Variation across genres and disciplines. J. Bamford and M, Bondi (Eds.), Dialogue within discourse communities: Metadiscursive perspectives on academic genres, 3-30.

Boyd, F. A. (1989). Developing presentation skills: A perspective derived from professional education. English for Specific Purposes, 8(2), 195-203.

Bruce, I. (2016). Constructing critical stance in University essays in English literature and sociology. English for Specific Purposes, 42, 13–25.

Bu, J. (2014). Towards a pragmatic analysis of metadiscourse in academic lectures: From relevance to adaptation. Discourse Studies, 16(4), 449-472.

Bunton, D. (1999). The use of higher level metatext in PhD theses. English for Specific Purposes, 18, S41-S56.

Carter-Thomas, S. (2005). Specialised syntax for specialised texts? In Colloque GLAT Barcelona (pp. 3-18).

Carter-Thomas, S., & Rowley-Jolivet, E. (2001). Syntactic differences in oral and written scientific discourse: the role of information structure. ASp. la revue du GERAS, (31-33), 19-37.

Carter-Thomas, S., & Rowley-Jolivet, E. (2003). Analysing the scientific conference presentation (CP), A methodological overview of a multimodal genre. ASp. la revue du GERAS, (39-40), 59-72.

Castronova, E. (2013). Down with dullness: Gaming the academic conference. Information Society, 29(2), 66-70.

Chou, M. H. (2011). The influence of learner strategies on oral presentations: A comparison between group and individual performance. English for Specific Purposes, 30(4), 272-285.

Cresswell, M. (1985). Structured Meanings: The Semantics of Propositional Attitudes. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

D’Angelo, L. (2010). Creating a framework for the analysis of academic posters. Language Studies Working Papers, 2, 38-50.

D’Angelo, L. (2011). Academic posters across disciplines: a preliminary study. Language Studies Working Papers, 3, 15-28.

Del Saz-Rubio, M. M. (2011). A pragmatic approach to the macro-structure and metadiscoursal features of research article introductions in the field of agricultural sciences. English for Specific Purposes, 30(4), 258-271.

Devi, I. S., Amir, Z., & Krish, P. (2014). Engaging Undergraduate Engineers in Oral Presentations: A Multimodal Approach. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(27 P3), 1510.

Evans, S. (2013). “Just wanna give you guys a bit of an update”: Insider perspectives on business presentations in Hong Kong. English for Specific Purposes, 32(4), 195-207.

Ferris, D. (1998). Students' views of academic aural/oral skills: A comparative needs analysis. TESOL Quarterly, 32(2), 289-316.

Ferris, D., & Tagg, T. (1996). Academic oral communication needs of EAP learners: What subject-matter instructors actually require. TESOL Quarterly, 30(1), 31-58.

Flowerdew, L. (2000). Investigating referential and pragmatic errors in a learner corpus. In L. Burnard & T. McEnery (Eds.), Rethinking language pedagogy from a corpus perspective (pp. 117–124). Frankfurt am main: Peter Lang Publishers.

Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold.

Heidari, K., & Ghanbari, H. (2012). Factors leading to an effective oral presentation in EFL classrooms. The TFLTA Journal, 3, 34-48.

Hunston, S. (1994). Evaluation and organization in a sample of written academic discourse. In M. Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in written text analysis, 191-218.

Hyland, K. (1996a). Talking to the academy: forms of hedging in science research articles. Written Communication, 13(2), 251-281.

Hyland, K. (1996b). Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 433-454.

Hyland, K. (1998). Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 30(4), 437-455.

Hyland, K. (2005a). Metadiscourse. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hyland, K. (2005b). Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173-192.

Hyland, K. (2007). Applying a gloss: Exemplifying and reformulating in academic discourse. Applied linguistics, 28(2), 266-285.

Hyland, K. (2012). Disciplinary identities: Individuality and community in academic discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kashiha, H., & Chan, S. H. (2014). Discourse functions of formulaic sequences in academic speech across two disciplines. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 14(2), 15-27.

Kobayashi, M. (2006). Second language socialization through an oral project presentation. In P. Beckett, Gulbahar, Miller, & Paul (Eds.), Project-based Second and Foreign Language Education: Past, Present, and Future, 71-93.

Kong, R., & Xin, X. (2009). Empirical study on metadiscourse in Chinese EFL learners’ oral communication. CELEA Journal, 32(1), 52-64.

Lancaster, Z. (2016). Expressing stance in undergraduate writing: Discipline-specific and general qualities. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 23, 16-30.

Lee, J. J., & Subtirelu, N. C. (2015). Metadiscourse in the classroom: A comparative analysis of EAP lessons and university lectures. English for Specific Purposes, 37, 52-62.

Lee, S. H. (2008). Attitude in undergraduate persuasive essays. Prospect, 23, 43-58

Li, T., & Wharton, S. (2012). Metadiscourse repertoire of L1 Mandarin undergraduates writing in English: A cross-contextual, cross-disciplinary study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11(4), 345-356.

Maurannen, A. (2009). Spoken Rhetoric: How do natives and non-natives fare? In E. Suomela-Salmi & F. Dervin (Eds.), Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives on academic discourse. Ámsterdam: John Benjamins.

Miles, R. (2009). Oral presentations for English proficiency purposes. Reflections on English Language Teaching, 8(2), 103-110.

Miles, R. (2014). The Learner's Perspective on Assessing and Evaluating their Oral Presentations. In Proceedings of CLaSIC 2014: The sixth international conference (pp. 337-352).

Morita, N. (2000). Discourse socialization through oral classroom activities in a TESL graduate program. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 279-310.

Munby, I. (2011). The oral presentation: An EFL teachers' toolkit. Studies in Culture, 99, 143-168.

Murillo Ornat, S. (2006a). The role of reformulation markers in academic lectures. In A.M. Hornero, A.M.H. Luzón, & S. Murillo (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics. Applications for the Study of English. Bern: Peter Lang: 353-364.

Murillo Ornat, S. (2006b). Developing the message: retake phenomena in scientific lectures. In C. Pérez-Llantada, & F. Gibson, (Eds.), English as a GloCalization Phenomenon. Observations for a Linguistic Microcosm. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia: 115-130.

Murillo Ornat, S. (2012). The use of reformulation markers in Business Management research articles: An intercultural analysis”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics17(1): 62-88.

Murillo Ornat, S. (2016). Reformulation markers and polyphony: a contrastive English-Spanish analysis. Languages in Contrast 16(1): 1-30.

Ohta, A. S. (1991). Evidentiality and politeness in Japanese. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 2, 211-238.

Otoshi, J., & Heffernen, N. (2008). Factors predicting effective oral presentations in EFL classrooms. Asian EFL Journal, 10(1), 65-78.

Recski, L. (2005). Interpersonal engagement in academic spoken discourse: a functional account of dissertation defenses. English for Specific Purposes, 24(1), 5-23.

Recski, L. J. (2006). Investigating the use of modality in academic spoken discourse: A functional account of US Dissertation Defenses. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/89038/226458.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Reinhart, S. M. (2005). Giving academic presentations. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Rowley, J. (2012). Six steps to successful academic conference presentation. Marketing Review, 12(4), 437-450.

Rowley-Jolivet, E., & Carter-Thomas, S. (2005). The rhetoric of conference presentation introductions: Context, argument and interaction. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15(1), 45-70.

Shimo, E. (2011) Implications for Effective Ways of Conducting and Assessing Presentations in EFL Classes. Language Education in Asia, 2(2), 227-236.

Swales, J. (2004). Evaluation in academic speech: First forays. Academic discourse: new insights into evaluation. Bern: Peter Lang, 31-53.

Talebinejad, M. R., & Ghadyani, F. (2012). A contrastive rhetoric analysis of' code glosses' in medicine academic research posters written in English by native and Iranian writers. Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation, 1(2), 81-95.

Tang, R., & John, S. (1999). The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student academic writing through the first person pronoun. English for Specific Purposes, 18, S23-S39.

Thompson, S. E. (2003). Text-structuring metadiscourse, intonation and the signalling of organisation in academic lectures. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2(1), 5-20.

Tsai, S.-C. (2011). Courseware integration into task-based learning: a case study of multimedia courseware-supported oral presentations for non-English major students. ReCALL, 23, 117-134.

Valero-Garcés, C. (1996). Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Spanish-English economics texts. English for Specific Purposes, 15(4), 279-294.

Vande Kopple, W. (1985). Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College composition and communication, 36, 82-93.

Vassileva, I. (2009). Argumentative strategies in conference discussion sessions. In E. Suomela-Salmi & F. Dervin (Eds.), Cross-linguistics and cross-cultural perspectives on academic discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.

Vaughan, E., & Clancy, B. (2013). Small corpora and pragmatics. In Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2013 (pp. 53-73). Springer Netherlands.

Vergaro, C. (2004). Discourse strategies of Italian and English sales promotion letters. English for Specific Purposes, 23(2), 181-207.

Wilson, J., & Brooks, G. (2014). Teaching presentation: Improving oral output with more structure. Proceedings of CLaSIC 2014, 512-524.

Zareva, A. (2009). Informational packaging, level of formality, and the use of circumstance adverbials in L1 and L2 student academic presentations. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(1), 55-68.

Zareva, A. (2011). 'And so that was it': Linking adverbials in student academic presentations. RELC Journal, 42(1), 5-15.

Zareva, A. (2012). Expression of stance and persuasion in student academic presentations. Applied psycholinguistics, 2, 316-323.

Zareva, A. (2013). Self-mention and the projection of multiple identity roles in TESOL graduate student presentations: The influence of the written academic genres. English for Specific Purposes, 32(2), 72-83.

Downloads

Published

2019-01-24

How to Cite

Nausa, R. (2019). Modality and Code Glosses to Transition from Academic Written to Oral Discourses. Íkala, Revista De Lenguaje Y Cultura, 24(1), 51–67. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.v24n01a02