Main points:
- The online lectures are content-driven and cover the concepts expected of a typical 100-level intro linguistics course.
- Pre-listening activities are added that focus on the authentic language used in the week’s lectures, rather than on the type of idealised phrases that are commonly covered in academic listening courses.
- The lectures were prepared first, and the pre-listening activities then tailored to match. ‘Academic listening’ is therefore supported in context, rather than taught as a generic skill.
- By embedding the pre-listening activities within the teaching units, the same content flows across the lectures and the activities, providing additional input on the topic.
- It is recognised that different disciplines use lectures for different purposes. The pre-listening activities in this course attempt to socialise students into the types of lecture they will encounter on their linguistics programme.
Each weekly unit begins with a series of online lecture videos, each lasting between five and twelve minutes, which cover the key concepts and ideas from the topic. The videos are created using PowerPoint slides with audio, which are then converted to mp4 files that can be embedded directly into the Moodle shell. In this way, the traditional lecture format is simulated, as student see the slides and hear the lecturer’s voice at the same time. Due to bandwidth issues and to enable students to focus on the written slides, the lecturer is not shown on camera during the videos. For similar reasons, students are also provided with backup copies of the PowerPoint slides, with and without the audio, so that they can download materials with smaller file sizes if they have trouble either downloading the mp4 format or streaming the video directly.
The additional academic literacy support is provided in the form of accompanying pre-listening notes and activities. These take different formats, but each is headed with a single key point (accompanied by an image of a key). Students are advised to complete these components immediately before watching the week’s lectures. While these activities are not assessed, the Moodle book is set up in such a way that they must click through this page to reach the lectures, or at least make a deliberate point of using the contents page to skip the page altogether, in the hope that they will glance at the key point if nothing else.
In Week 2, students are simply asked to read a short page that introduces the idea of active listening. The aim is to help them realise that they will be listening to lectures for purposes other than learning new factual knowledge.
In Week 2, students are simply asked to read a short page that introduces the idea of active listening. The aim is to help them realise that they will be listening to lectures for purposes other than learning new factual knowledge.
Lectures require a more active type of learning than the simple copying down of facts and information.
The notes start by reminding students that they will be learning in a very different way at university from what they may be familiar with at school, and then use a diagram of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning (Bloom et al., 1956, revised by Anderson et al., 2001) to explain the different levels of thinking expected. The key point is broadly generic to all disciplines, but the examples focus on the types of listening they will encounter in linguistics. Box 1 provides the text that accompanies the diagram.
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Box 1
Although lectures introduce you to new ideas from your field, they will not teach you many new ‘facts’ to memorise. This is because REMEMBERING is a lower-order thinking skill, so it is not important or useful to remember (or write down) every single thing you hear in a lecture. Instead, you should be thinking about how you can show your UNDERSTANDING of new information. The best way to do this is to write some brief notes in your own words that capture the key points of the lecture. Once you understand the ideas, you should be able to APPLY them in new ways that weren't mentioned in the lecture. For example, you may learn about some factors that cause languages to die out, so you should then think about how these factors may be affecting your own language, or other languages spoken in this region. If your lecturer uses examples from a language that you don’t speak, your job is to apply the ideas in ways that make sense to you, rather than trying to remember the information from the example. A higher-order skill is the ability to ANALYSE the ideas you encounter. This involves thinking deeply about information, breaking it down into smaller parts, and asking yourself questions such as ‘Why does this cause language loss?’, ‘How do speakers act in ways that are disadvantageous to their languages?’, ‘What would happen if they acted differently?’, and so on. Again, you may not be told to ask yourself these questions in the lecture, but you should constantly be analysing what you hear. A further skill that becomes particularly important as you make the transition from school to university is the ability to EVALUATE what you are told. You should ask yourself whether the information seems believable, and how you can judge this. You should consider whether new ideas conflict with other ideas you have heard before, and try to establish which seem more likely. When studying linguistics, you will quite often come across ideas about language that seem quite different from the way the general public thinks about language, and your evaluation skills will be essential. In many cases, you are not deciding whether something is right or wrong, but simply how it fits in with other ways of looking at the world. Finally, once you know how to process information in all these ways, you are able to CREATE new ideas about the same topic, or come up with solutions, suggestions and strategies in response to practical issues. When you graduate from university, it will be your ability to apply, analyse and evaluate information in order to create new ideas and solutions that will be valued in the workplace, rather than your ability to remember or understand specific facts about any particular subject.
Although lectures introduce you to new ideas from your field, they will not teach you many new ‘facts’ to memorise. This is because REMEMBERING is a lower-order thinking skill, so it is not important or useful to remember (or write down) every single thing you hear in a lecture. Instead, you should be thinking about how you can show your UNDERSTANDING of new information. The best way to do this is to write some brief notes in your own words that capture the key points of the lecture. Once you understand the ideas, you should be able to APPLY them in new ways that weren't mentioned in the lecture. For example, you may learn about some factors that cause languages to die out, so you should then think about how these factors may be affecting your own language, or other languages spoken in this region. If your lecturer uses examples from a language that you don’t speak, your job is to apply the ideas in ways that make sense to you, rather than trying to remember the information from the example. A higher-order skill is the ability to ANALYSE the ideas you encounter. This involves thinking deeply about information, breaking it down into smaller parts, and asking yourself questions such as ‘Why does this cause language loss?’, ‘How do speakers act in ways that are disadvantageous to their languages?’, ‘What would happen if they acted differently?’, and so on. Again, you may not be told to ask yourself these questions in the lecture, but you should constantly be analysing what you hear. A further skill that becomes particularly important as you make the transition from school to university is the ability to EVALUATE what you are told. You should ask yourself whether the information seems believable, and how you can judge this. You should consider whether new ideas conflict with other ideas you have heard before, and try to establish which seem more likely. When studying linguistics, you will quite often come across ideas about language that seem quite different from the way the general public thinks about language, and your evaluation skills will be essential. In many cases, you are not deciding whether something is right or wrong, but simply how it fits in with other ways of looking at the world. Finally, once you know how to process information in all these ways, you are able to CREATE new ideas about the same topic, or come up with solutions, suggestions and strategies in response to practical issues. When you graduate from university, it will be your ability to apply, analyse and evaluate information in order to create new ideas and solutions that will be valued in the workplace, rather than your ability to remember or understand specific facts about any particular subject.
Week 3 covers the type of signposting language that lecturers typically use when introducing a series of related points, when defining key terms, and when highlighting the complexity of an issue.
Listen out for signposts so that you know what is coming next.
The notes also cover the type of language they might expect to hear in these situations, but which might actually not be provided explicitly (see Box 2).
Box 2
Some common ‘definition’ signposts you might expect to hear are:
Some common ‘definition’ signposts you might expect to hear are:
- This means ...
- This is defined as ...
- An important concept is 'prestige', which refers to the level of respect people give to a particular language.
- An important concept is 'prestige', in other words the level of respect people give to a particular language.
- An important concept is 'prestige', or the level of respect people give to a particular language.
- An important concept is 'prestige', the level of respect people give to a particular language.
Our assumption is that, while lecturers ought to take more responsibility for introducing their points clearly, it has to be acknowledged that they won’t all do this, so it is our duty to socialise students into the lecturing practices that they will encounter. To exemplify the issue, students are then invited to listen to a podcast from The Five Minute Linguist (No. 21), in which a range of terms are defined explicitly and implicitly. The topic of the podcast is related to the week’s unit, meaning that the academic literacy activity provides additional content, rather than reducing the amount that is covered in the unit.
In Week 4, the pre-listening focus is on the difference between main ideas and details.
In Week 4, the pre-listening focus is on the difference between main ideas and details.
Listen out for main ideas that seem important to the whole lecture. Only note down specific details if you think they will help you remember the main ideas.
Another podcast from The Five Minute Linguist (No. 2) is used, again directly relevant to the week’s topic. Students are asked to listen to the podcast and try to answer five questions:
Questions 3-5 can be answered using a simple word or number that is provided clearly in the audio. Question 2 requires a specific word ‘Ethnologue’, which is assumed to be unfamiliar to the students. Question 1 requires students to synthesise a range of different ideas from the whole podcast to explain why it is hard to know exactly how many languages there are in the world.
Having tried to answer the questions, the students are asked to reflect on the different question types and which kinds of information are more important to note down in a lecture situation. The strategies suggested are, firstly, to not waste time copying specific details that they can easily look up again later if necessary; secondly, to note down initial sounds of unfamiliar words that might be important, along with any clues to their meaning that will help them look them up later; and thirdly, to focus most of their attention on the overall point that the lecturer seems to be making, which may require listening more and writing less. They are also reminded that this question of why it is hard to count languages exactly is the question they will have to answer for their upcoming assignment!
Week 5 suggests strategies for using the outline slide at the beginning of a lecture to help structure a readiness to listen.
- Why is it hard to answer the question 'How many languages are there?'
- What is the name of the “comprehensive directory of the world’s languages” that the speaker mentions?
- How many languages does this directory estimate there to be?
- Which language is largest?
- How many native speakers does it have?
Questions 3-5 can be answered using a simple word or number that is provided clearly in the audio. Question 2 requires a specific word ‘Ethnologue’, which is assumed to be unfamiliar to the students. Question 1 requires students to synthesise a range of different ideas from the whole podcast to explain why it is hard to know exactly how many languages there are in the world.
Having tried to answer the questions, the students are asked to reflect on the different question types and which kinds of information are more important to note down in a lecture situation. The strategies suggested are, firstly, to not waste time copying specific details that they can easily look up again later if necessary; secondly, to note down initial sounds of unfamiliar words that might be important, along with any clues to their meaning that will help them look them up later; and thirdly, to focus most of their attention on the overall point that the lecturer seems to be making, which may require listening more and writing less. They are also reminded that this question of why it is hard to count languages exactly is the question they will have to answer for their upcoming assignment!
Week 5 suggests strategies for using the outline slide at the beginning of a lecture to help structure a readiness to listen.
Turning an outline into questions will help you focus.
In other words, since lecturers will not give explicit comprehension questions at the start of class (as practised in the Week 4 activity), students can create their own questions using keywords from the introduction. These questions may focus on what the keywords mean, what the differences are between them, what the student already knows about them, how they might be relevant to the week’s topic, and so on. The outline slides from the actual Week 5 lectures are used, in the hope that students will activate this type of thinking before watching. Moreover, if they find the strategy helpful in listening to the core information from the week’s lectures, it may encourage them to apply the same approach in other weeks.
Week 6 focuses on applying, analysing, evaluating and extending ideas from lectures.
The ideas from lectures are just the starting point.
The students are reminded of the different levels of thinking referred to in Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (introduced in Week 2), and then given suggestions of things to note down while watching the lectures that will help them link concepts to their own experience, link concepts to previous topics from the course, identify ideas that they will need to follow up in more detail after the lecture (either to check understanding or find out more), and identify ideas that will help them work on their upcoming assignment. See Box 3. As usual, the suggestions are generic and could be adapted to any discipline, but the notes refer to the week’s topic of language change in order to provide context.
Box 3
Links to own experience
You will discover this week that all languages are changing all the time. You will discover that this is a natural process, and you will also hear that speakers often express negative attitudes about change in their language. None of this is NEW information for you. It is intended to make you reflect on your own context.
As you listen ... Note down examples of things that have changed in your own language, or attitudes that you have heard people say about this type of change. Does your language seem to change more or less than English?
Links to previous topics
You should also see the connections between language change and our previous topic: Languages and dialects. One reason that we have so many different languages and dialects in the world (and particularly in this region) is that all languages change.
As you listen ... Note down points that remind you of what you learnt last week about different languages and dialects. What is similar and what is different?
Points to follow up in more detail
You will also hear some new information that won't make complete sense to you yet. It may create new questions in your mind, which will take you beyond these particular lectures.
As you listen ... Note down things that you want to understand in more detail. Decide whether you are struggling to understand this lecture (in which case, you might decide to listen to the lecture again or seek help with understanding it), or whether you have understood the content of the lecture and simply want to know more about it (in which case, see if the weekly reading contains the answers, or whether you need to do some independent research).
Points to use in your assignment
At this stage in the course, you will also be working on one of your major assignments. You should therefore be listening out for ideas in the lectures that help you tackle the upcoming assignment.
As you listen ... Highlight any points that you think are relevant to the upcoming assignment. Do these points add new ideas that you hadn't thought about? Do they help expand some ideas you already had? Go back to your assignment draft and decide how to use this new information.
Links to own experience
You will discover this week that all languages are changing all the time. You will discover that this is a natural process, and you will also hear that speakers often express negative attitudes about change in their language. None of this is NEW information for you. It is intended to make you reflect on your own context.
As you listen ... Note down examples of things that have changed in your own language, or attitudes that you have heard people say about this type of change. Does your language seem to change more or less than English?
Links to previous topics
You should also see the connections between language change and our previous topic: Languages and dialects. One reason that we have so many different languages and dialects in the world (and particularly in this region) is that all languages change.
As you listen ... Note down points that remind you of what you learnt last week about different languages and dialects. What is similar and what is different?
Points to follow up in more detail
You will also hear some new information that won't make complete sense to you yet. It may create new questions in your mind, which will take you beyond these particular lectures.
As you listen ... Note down things that you want to understand in more detail. Decide whether you are struggling to understand this lecture (in which case, you might decide to listen to the lecture again or seek help with understanding it), or whether you have understood the content of the lecture and simply want to know more about it (in which case, see if the weekly reading contains the answers, or whether you need to do some independent research).
Points to use in your assignment
At this stage in the course, you will also be working on one of your major assignments. You should therefore be listening out for ideas in the lectures that help you tackle the upcoming assignment.
As you listen ... Highlight any points that you think are relevant to the upcoming assignment. Do these points add new ideas that you hadn't thought about? Do they help expand some ideas you already had? Go back to your assignment draft and decide how to use this new information.
The Week 7 listening focus is on dealing with technical vocabulary.
Use smart strategies to help you deal with complex vocabulary so that you don't get distracted.
This week, there are simply some tips and suggestions (see Box 4) about how to deal with unfamiliar words in different situations, noting that the strategies required will depend to a certain extent on whether there are just occasional words that are new, or whether the extent of unfamiliar vocabulary is preventing them being able to follow the lectures at all. They are also reminded to take advantage of the flexible mode of delivery, which means that they have access to text and audio at the same time (with key terminology always given in both media), and also that they can download the lecture materials for review later on. The notes also provide strategies for building up their discipline-specific vocabulary, using the lecture materials and readings.
Box 4
Dealing with technical vocabulary during a lecture
If just one or two words are unfamiliar, try not to look them up until after the lecture. You will probably understand
enough from the context of the lecture, and you can look them up later if necessary. If you look words up while trying
to listen, you will miss the next part of the explanation.
If, however, you find several unfamiliar words are preventing you understanding most of the lecture, you may need to do some pre-listening work. Skip ahead to the reading if you find that easier, or do some internet searches of the key terms from the topic so that your mind is already warmed up to the topic before the lecture starts.
Always watch the video version of the lectures if you can so that you hear the audio at the same time as reading the slides. If a word is key to the topic, it will be written on the slide AND explained orally at the same time.
Building up your technical vocabulary
Every subject has different vocabulary that is important. At 100-level, you will be introduced to lots of new terms, but you will then see these terms reappearing later on in the programme, so it's important that you become familiar with them. In the short-term, this will help you pass your assignments and exam for this course, but you will see long-term benefits as
you move through 200-level and beyond.
Review your notes from lectures and readings regularly. Build up a list of key terms and check that you know what they mean. You could make yourself a set of flashcards containing the keyword on one side and the definition on the other, which will help you revise for exams and then provide excellent preparation for later courses.
If you know you struggle with vocabulary, you will probably find the reading quite difficult too. It can be tempting to avoid reading altogether, but this will only make things worse. Try your best to spend some extra time on the reading, because you will only learn the new words once you have seen them several times. The more you read, the easier it will become. If the course texts are too difficult, look for other texts on the internet that cover the same basic area, and then return to the course texts once you feel more confident.
Dealing with technical vocabulary during a lecture
If just one or two words are unfamiliar, try not to look them up until after the lecture. You will probably understand
enough from the context of the lecture, and you can look them up later if necessary. If you look words up while trying
to listen, you will miss the next part of the explanation.
If, however, you find several unfamiliar words are preventing you understanding most of the lecture, you may need to do some pre-listening work. Skip ahead to the reading if you find that easier, or do some internet searches of the key terms from the topic so that your mind is already warmed up to the topic before the lecture starts.
Always watch the video version of the lectures if you can so that you hear the audio at the same time as reading the slides. If a word is key to the topic, it will be written on the slide AND explained orally at the same time.
Building up your technical vocabulary
Every subject has different vocabulary that is important. At 100-level, you will be introduced to lots of new terms, but you will then see these terms reappearing later on in the programme, so it's important that you become familiar with them. In the short-term, this will help you pass your assignments and exam for this course, but you will see long-term benefits as
you move through 200-level and beyond.
Review your notes from lectures and readings regularly. Build up a list of key terms and check that you know what they mean. You could make yourself a set of flashcards containing the keyword on one side and the definition on the other, which will help you revise for exams and then provide excellent preparation for later courses.
If you know you struggle with vocabulary, you will probably find the reading quite difficult too. It can be tempting to avoid reading altogether, but this will only make things worse. Try your best to spend some extra time on the reading, because you will only learn the new words once you have seen them several times. The more you read, the easier it will become. If the course texts are too difficult, look for other texts on the internet that cover the same basic area, and then return to the course texts once you feel more confident.
Week 8 follows the week-long mid-semester break, so the next set of notes aims to help students review the note taking strategies they have used so far.
Keep reviewing your notes to ensure that they are helpful records of what you have heard.
The page begins with a flow chart (see Box 5) to help them identify, in a fairly practical way, whether they are keeping up with the lectures and managing their viewing and note-taking in an efficient and helpful way. This is then followed by a series of strategies to help students who are already taking notes but then not finding these useful when reviewing the lectures later on.
Box 5
In Weeks 9 and 10, the lectures contain a lot of factual information about language learning that may well be completely new to the students. The pre-listening activities in Week 9 aim to help students deal with large volumes of information and data, with the key point:
Make smart use of PowerPoint slides to guide your notes.
Students are advised to make decisions based on whether or not the slides are provided in advance. If they are provided, they can be used as a skeleton that can be annotated while listening. If they are not provided in advance, they will still be available afterwards, so only brief notes are needed that will later complement the information on the slides.
In contrast, Week 10 focuses on dealing with new factual information that may go against some of the pre-conceived ideas they may hold about language learning, such as the beliefs that parents should speak English at home if they want their children to learn this language well, or that school rules that enforce the use of English only are effective. Given that linguistics is the study of a phenomenon that the general public uses all the time and often holds strong ideas about (language), it can be hard for new linguistics students to weigh up populist beliefs against research-based evidence that may seem counter-intuitive. The key point given to the students this week is:
In contrast, Week 10 focuses on dealing with new factual information that may go against some of the pre-conceived ideas they may hold about language learning, such as the beliefs that parents should speak English at home if they want their children to learn this language well, or that school rules that enforce the use of English only are effective. Given that linguistics is the study of a phenomenon that the general public uses all the time and often holds strong ideas about (language), it can be hard for new linguistics students to weigh up populist beliefs against research-based evidence that may seem counter-intuitive. The key point given to the students this week is:
Listen with an open mind for views that may go against what you currently believe. Weigh up the evidence to decide what seems believable.
The final section of the course examines a number of debates about language. The content is less important here than the awareness that academia is a space in which different positions about the same thing may be justified in different ways. In Week 11, students are helped to think about their lectures as models for writing, given that lecturers often draw attention to opposing views and evidence, as well as putting forward their own viewpoints.
Many lectures provide a good model for your written essays in terms of the way an argument is constructed. However, the style of delivery may be less formal.
The notes (see Box 6) guide students in listening out for rhetorical questions, definitions, examples, references to sources, shifts in the argument, and phrases that set the terms of an argument, before reflecting on whether they would expect to use all these features in a written essay.
Box 6
1. Rhetorical questions
In the first lecture this week (A TED-Ed video by Andreea Calude), you will hear a lot of rhetorical questions at the start. The purpose of these questions is to grab your attention, to make you think, and to set the scene for the argument that will follow. Listen out for these questions.
2. Definitions
You will also hear two key terms being defined: descriptivism and prescriptivism. The same terms will be defined in both lectures. Listen out for the language used when giving definitions in a lecture.
3. Examples
Throughout both lectures, you will hear several examples being given. Some of these are introduced with quite obvious signposting (e.g. ‘for example, …), while others may be introduced in advance of the phenomena they exemplify.
4. Referring to sources
In the first lecture, you will hear some general references to the views of others such as ‘linguists have understood that …’, while the second lecture refers more explicitly to sources or authors. Listen out for the differences between the way the views of others are signposted.
5. Signalling a shift in the argument
You should also listen out for transitions between different sections of the lectures. Even though they are very short, they are still divided into small sections, each covering a separate topic. Listen out for the signposting language used to move from one section to another.
6. Setting the terms of argument
Both lectures discuss the difference between descriptivism and prescriptivism. However, both argue that the two perspectives are not actually as separate - or opposing - as many people believe. In the first lecture, the phrase ‘mutually exclusive’ is used. In the second lecture, the phrase ‘binary’ is used. These are similar phrases that are both used to make the same argument. Listen out for the ways they are used to set the terms of the argument.
The only feature from the above list that we might not expect to find in essays is a rhetorical question. These are commonly used in lectures and other informational spoken texts, when the speaker is trying to ‘teach’ or ‘guide’ the listeners to a particular way of thinking. A written essay is usually used as an assessment tool, so the roles between student and lecturer are reversed and it is less appropriate for the student to pose such questions to the lecturer. However, it is also because of the style of language. A question and answer format can often appear too conversational or ‘chatty’
for a written essay, which is normally expected to maintain a more formal distance between the writer and the reader.
The other features are all commonly used in both lectures and essays, if an argument is being created. However, once again, the style of delivery may be more conversational than in a written essay.
1. Rhetorical questions
In the first lecture this week (A TED-Ed video by Andreea Calude), you will hear a lot of rhetorical questions at the start. The purpose of these questions is to grab your attention, to make you think, and to set the scene for the argument that will follow. Listen out for these questions.
2. Definitions
You will also hear two key terms being defined: descriptivism and prescriptivism. The same terms will be defined in both lectures. Listen out for the language used when giving definitions in a lecture.
3. Examples
Throughout both lectures, you will hear several examples being given. Some of these are introduced with quite obvious signposting (e.g. ‘for example, …), while others may be introduced in advance of the phenomena they exemplify.
4. Referring to sources
In the first lecture, you will hear some general references to the views of others such as ‘linguists have understood that …’, while the second lecture refers more explicitly to sources or authors. Listen out for the differences between the way the views of others are signposted.
5. Signalling a shift in the argument
You should also listen out for transitions between different sections of the lectures. Even though they are very short, they are still divided into small sections, each covering a separate topic. Listen out for the signposting language used to move from one section to another.
6. Setting the terms of argument
Both lectures discuss the difference between descriptivism and prescriptivism. However, both argue that the two perspectives are not actually as separate - or opposing - as many people believe. In the first lecture, the phrase ‘mutually exclusive’ is used. In the second lecture, the phrase ‘binary’ is used. These are similar phrases that are both used to make the same argument. Listen out for the ways they are used to set the terms of the argument.
The only feature from the above list that we might not expect to find in essays is a rhetorical question. These are commonly used in lectures and other informational spoken texts, when the speaker is trying to ‘teach’ or ‘guide’ the listeners to a particular way of thinking. A written essay is usually used as an assessment tool, so the roles between student and lecturer are reversed and it is less appropriate for the student to pose such questions to the lecturer. However, it is also because of the style of language. A question and answer format can often appear too conversational or ‘chatty’
for a written essay, which is normally expected to maintain a more formal distance between the writer and the reader.
The other features are all commonly used in both lectures and essays, if an argument is being created. However, once again, the style of delivery may be more conversational than in a written essay.
This is an explicit attempt to socialise students into the conventions of academic arguments, using the lecture as a model.
Week 12 continues the same theme by helping students to identify the difference between fact-based lectures and argument-based lectures, given that they will be exposed to both in linguistics courses.
Week 12 continues the same theme by helping students to identify the difference between fact-based lectures and argument-based lectures, given that they will be exposed to both in linguistics courses.
Try and predict in advance whether you are listening for facts or listening in order to follow an argument.
The week’s lecture titles are used to help them do this:
The final teaching week of the course, Week 13, consolidates the previous topics:
- "The spread of English around the world"
- "English mania"
- "Don’t kill your language!"
The final teaching week of the course, Week 13, consolidates the previous topics:
Use signposting language to help you follow an argument.
A skeleton script from one of the week’s lectures (See Box 7) is used to focus on the rhetorical devices and signposting language used to help them predict how the argument might unfold. Again, students are then advised to focus on the similarities between oral and written presentations of viewpoints, in order to help them learn how to structure an academic argument in different modes.
Box 7
Title: Who does English belong to?
In this lecture, we will consider …
This seems … , but we will see that …
We will look first at … , but we will see that …
We will then look at …, with reference firstly to …, and secondly, by looking at …
A starting point might seem to be that … This is …, so does this … ?
If so, should we …, since that should …?
But … , so, if that is …, then …
And should we consider … to be …?
There is …, so it is hard to know …
So, although …, it is very hard to ….
The answer may be to …
This is …
The problem with that view is that …
And then what about …?
And, if so, then we will have to say that …
Does this mean …?
What do we mean by …?
Widdowson (1994) defines …
He argues that …
As such it …
Taking this point to its logical conclusion, Widdowson therefore argues that …
So if …, this suggests that …, and therefore …
It is clear that …
So are these …?
It’s hard to say, but …
Compare this situation with ….
So do we …?
As Widdowson notes, it is …
But if it is …, then why is it not …?
What is the difference?
In what has become known as …, Quirk (1990) and Kachru (1991) have tackled these questions from very different perspectives.
Quirk’s main point is that … because …
Kachru responded the following year, arguing that …
He argues that …
We will end by comparing the views of two …
The first is …, who …
But he also …
He explains that …
In other words, he has …
Another African writer, this time Ngugi wa Thiongo of Kenya, fundamentally disagrees about …
He remembers that …
So, unlike Achebe, he asserts that …
There are therefore …
Attempts to … often …, and it may be that …
Title: Who does English belong to?
In this lecture, we will consider …
This seems … , but we will see that …
We will look first at … , but we will see that …
We will then look at …, with reference firstly to …, and secondly, by looking at …
A starting point might seem to be that … This is …, so does this … ?
If so, should we …, since that should …?
But … , so, if that is …, then …
And should we consider … to be …?
There is …, so it is hard to know …
So, although …, it is very hard to ….
The answer may be to …
This is …
The problem with that view is that …
And then what about …?
And, if so, then we will have to say that …
Does this mean …?
What do we mean by …?
Widdowson (1994) defines …
He argues that …
As such it …
Taking this point to its logical conclusion, Widdowson therefore argues that …
So if …, this suggests that …, and therefore …
It is clear that …
So are these …?
It’s hard to say, but …
Compare this situation with ….
So do we …?
As Widdowson notes, it is …
But if it is …, then why is it not …?
What is the difference?
In what has become known as …, Quirk (1990) and Kachru (1991) have tackled these questions from very different perspectives.
Quirk’s main point is that … because …
Kachru responded the following year, arguing that …
He argues that …
We will end by comparing the views of two …
The first is …, who …
But he also …
He explains that …
In other words, he has …
Another African writer, this time Ngugi wa Thiongo of Kenya, fundamentally disagrees about …
He remembers that …
So, unlike Achebe, he asserts that …
There are therefore …
Attempts to … often …, and it may be that …