Lecture Comprehension (INO) Notes on Unit 5

How relevant is lecture comprehension to professionals? It seems to be that an important activity of current professionals is training. For multinational companies, the easiest code for delivering courses to multilingual audiences of workers is English. Therefore, from time to time you may be attending training courses presented in English and the achievement of your learning goals are somewhat related to your listening proficiency. What is the learning context under these circumstances? See table below: STUDENTS Where are they? Knowledge of English? Use of English in the country of training? Their own country Foreign country Native language Non-native language As a foreign language Has a native / official status TRAINERS / LECTURERS Foreign country Their own country Non-native language Native language Has a native / official status As a foreign language

Let's assume to different combinations of characteristics for our learning purposes on this unit: Combination A There is a group of multilingual students (some of them native speakers of English) attending a course / conference in a foreign country and their trainer is a native speaker of English. Combination B The students are all non-native speakers of English, they are attending a course / conference in their own country and the trainer is a foreign non-native speaker of English. Apart from understanding the accents of co-participants and lecturer, understanding the lecturing style is essential to extract the correct information from the training. Remember from Unit 1 that the emitters have to adapt their representations to those expected by the receivers. Nevertheless, lecturers / emitters involved in business training have learned themselves in an English-representation context or follow this model because it is considered as more prestigious. This implies that the receivers will be able to make predictions on how the lecture / discourse is going to be structured if they know how it works within an English-representation context. Lecturing styles (How the trainers carry out their teaching / lecturing): Discourse structure: is the lecture following a OBSERVATION HYPOTHESIS TESTING HYPOTHESIS - CONCLUSION pattern or a PROBLEM SOLUTION EVALUATION pattern. This depends mainly on the type of subject being taught (applied engineering subjects are good examples of the second one and theoretical lectures are examples of the first one). Discourse signalling strategies: understanding what words uses the professor to indicate that one topic has been completed and a new one is being developed. (...let's conclude... let's continue... ... we can begin by... ... but a different approach could be ... .... in a different context ... ...now, we can begin with the...)1 Interpersonal features: are a combination of personality and cultural appropriateness of the person lecturing, in other words how the trainers combine their personality with the use of the social distance in the context of the learners, with their shared general knowledge with the learners, and with the shared language knowledge with the
1 http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/listening/stages/2.1.xml (examples of signalling words).
CEPADE 2nd Semester Prof. Ismael Arinas 1

learners. Lexical and grammatical features: it is essential to know first the vocabulary of the subject being taught and then the general formal language that is frequent in lecturing. The grammar of lectures is more complex than other spoken situations as it is closer to the written language.

The actual presentation of the lecture can be by reading, by asking questions from time to time or in the form of a discussion. What is IMPORTANT for a student in listening to LECTURES You must be able to identify the purpose and scope of the lecture; You must be able to identify the lecture topic and follow its development; You must recognise words which mark the structure of the lecture; You must recognise keywords related to the lecture topic; You must be able to deduce meaning from context; and You must deduce meaning from intonation.

Voluntary task: Go to the web site below, listen to the fragment (use the

transcript if you find it too difficult) and answer the questions. http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/listening/demo/index.xml (Listening Demo based on a lecture downloadable or on streaming and a transcript of the lecture Australian English.) 1) What are the purpose and scope of the lecture? __________________________________________________________________________ 2) What is the topic of the lecture? _______________________________________________ 3) Provide 4 examples of words which signal or mark the structure of the lecture. 1. ____________________________________ 2. ____________________________________ 3. ____________________________________ 4. ____________________________________

4) Indicate 4 examples of keywords in this lecture. 1. ____________________________________ 3. ____________________________________ 2. ____________________________________ 4. ____________________________________ 5) What do the following expressions mean in their context? 6) Does intonation have a special meaning in this lecture? When? ________________________________________________________________________

CEPADE

2nd Semester Prof. Ismael Arinas