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Lexical Phrases in L2 academic presentations

Monal Dewle
M.Phil {ELE} English and Foreign Languages University, Hyerabad-7, India. m4monal@gmail.com

Abstract:
Lexical phrases (e.g. let's have a look at, take for an example) are unanalysed chunks that play a significant role in language acquisition. Lexical phrases are seen as different from other chunks found in language because of their pragmatic function. Research has shown that lexical phrases help in understanding the discourse of academic lectures, and give coherence to various bits of information in the spoken discourse. Lexical phrases help listeners follow lectures because speakers mark the beginning and use them to signal topic shifts and emphasize points. The present study focuses on types of lexical phrases used during formal academic presentations and examines how lexical phrases benefit speakers in structuring their presentation, and listeners in comprehending presentation. The formal semester-end presentations of five advanced level learners of English pursuing their Masters in a university were recorded and analysed. It was found that topic shifters were used more often than other types of lexical phrases. Analysis of the data revealed that some lexical phrases guide the comprehension of listeners, while others help speakers in effective production as well as controlling their thought processes. Keywords: lexical phrases, academic presentations, structuring, and comprehension of the presentations.

Introduction
Lexical phrases are multi-word phenomena that exist somewhere between the traditional poles of lexicon and syntax, conventionalised form/function composites that occur more frequently and have more idiomatically determined meanings than language that is put together each time(Nattinger & Decarrico, 1992:1), for e.g. let me give you an example, let's have a look at, take for an example, Such lexical phrases prove very useful for language learners in communicative discourse (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1992). These phrases provide support for communication as they help in phatic communication. For instance, an expression like How do you do? is learned by a learner, as a way to begin a conversation. Another function of this phrase is to inquire about health.

Lexical phrases convey the same language function in different ways. For instance, I am terribly sorry is used by a basic proficiency level learner. As the proficiency of the learner increases, he/she adds the adverbial phrases, I am (terribly/ very/ awfully) sorry. This shows that lexical phrases offer learners a way of expressing the same function in different ways, and form a basis for increasing the complexity of the earlier utterance by adding more words (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1992: 13). In this way, lexical phrases help learners in enhancing their knowledge of structures. Lexical phrases are very easy to retrieve because they are stored as whole chunks, and not as individual words (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1992: 27). Phrases like what are you doing, hope you are fine are stored in the memory as single units and can be used for any situation as they are readily available and retrievable. From the above discussion, it is clear that lexical phrases are helpful to learners for communicative purposes. It has also been argued that lexical phrases are helpful in academic discourse (Dudley-Evans and Johns, 1981). This paper looks at these phrases and attempt to show how they help in second language academic presentations. In a study done by Nattinger and Decarrico (1988), the researchers examined lexical phrases occurring in several representative academic lectures. They suggested ways of teaching these phrases to enhance students ability to comprehend lectures, and help them to predict what information is likely to come up next and to organize and interpret the flow of information more easily (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1988:91). We will start with a brief description of the research carried out in the area of lexical phrases in academic presentations, followed by our study and the analysis of data. In the last part of this presentation, the conclusion and implications will be discussed.

Lexical Phrases in academic presentation

We will now look at how lexical phrases are useful in academic presentations, both for speakers and listeners. Lexical phrases can be used in various contexts, but in academic lectures they are helpful in signalling the discourse and the relations within it. Therefore they are termed as macro-markers (Chaudron and Richards, 1986 cited in Nattinger and Decarrico, 1988:93). They are different from micro-markers such as well, so, or now etc. which are pause fillers. Lexical phrases represent a higher level of information, such as exemplification, summarization, clarification etc. In order to classify and categorise macro-markers, Dudley-Evans and Johns (DudleyEvans and Johns, 1981 cited in Nattinger and Decarrico, 1988:93) divided academic lectures into three styles. The first one was the reading style, in which the lecturer reads or speaks as if reading from notes. The second style was the rhetorical style, in which the lecturer is like a performer rather than a guide/ facilitator. The third was the

3 conversational style, which consists of more informal speech and interaction with audience/listeners. It was found that the conversational style is preferred over other styles because it is more listener-centred. Listeners are not seen as passive recipients but as active participants. Lexical phrases are termed as macro-organizers rather than macro-markers because they grab learners attention by helping them organize spoken information mentally as the lecture goes along. Similarly, macro-organizers help in channelling the angle of listening perception of lecture organization (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1988:94). Macro-organizers are divided into eight categories on the basis of their function: - topic markers, topic shifters, summarizers, exemplifiers, relators, evaluators, qualifiers and aside-markers. These functional categories are further divided into: (a) global macro-organizers which indicate the overall organization of the lecture (b) local macro-organizers which highlight sequencing or importance of information within the framework set by global organizers at specific points. This further classification helps in distinguishing main topics from explanations, examples, and relations etc., which in turn serve as a scaffold for the topics (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1988:94). Among the eight functional categories of macro-organizers, global macro-organizers are: 1) Topic markers- that come at the beginning of lectures, for e.g., well be taking a look at X, maybe we should start with X. 2) Topic shifter, for e.g., the other thing X is Y. 3) Summarizers, for e.g., in short, to tie this up. The local macro-organizers include the rest: 4) Exemplifiers, for e.g., maybe if I show you X, thatll or thisll clear it up. 5) Relators, for e.g., you might say that. 6) Evaluators, for e.g., no problem with that. 7) Qualifiers, for e.g., the catch here is. 8) Asides, for e.g., (I) guess I got off the track here, where was I? Relators are included in this categorization because they signal sequencing, restatement of important points, and comparison or contrast of topics or ideas. Evaluators feature here since they signal the relative importance of topics and examples (Nattinger and Decarrico, 1988: 95-96).

The study
The present study focuses on the frequency and type of lexical phrases that occur when subjects make formal presentations and the types of lexical phrases that benefit speakers, as well as listeners. The research questions, this study try to answer are: 1) 2) 3) 4) Do second language users use lexical phrases while making presentations? When and for what purposes do they use lexical phrases? How do these lexical phrases help in the comprehension of presentations? Do learners use phrases to regulate their thought processes?

In order to answer these questions, we analysed the frequency and use of different types of lexical phrases quantitatively, and tried to understand their purpose through a qualitative analysis of their discourse. We also tried to identify the style of presentation using the categories given by Dudley-Evans and Johns (1981).

Subjects
5 subjects between the age group of 20-25 years (M=2, F=3) pursuing their M.A participated in the study. They were selected as they had sufficient exposure to English language, and had studied English as a second language for at least 15 years.

Presentation Topics
The topics of presentation varied according to the speakers. The first presentation was on the Prepositional Aspects and the Algebra of the paths; the second on the Acquisition of English dative alternations by the Arab learners of English, the third on the Negative feedback as regulation and second language learning in the zone of proximal development, the fourth on the Dramatic monologue and the fifth on the Poetry by Kamala Das. For the study, these presentations were recorded. These presentations were transcribed and were later analysed to see how many and what types of lexical phrases were being used. The data was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. All the lexical phrases from the data were identified and characterised on the basis of eight categories (topic makers, topic shifters, summarizers, exemplifications, relators, evaluators, qualifiers and aside markers, self-regulation, attention seekers).

Findings and Discussion

The aim of this analysis was two-fold. These lexical phrases are categorised on the basis of the classification given by Dudley-Evans and Johns (1981). The classification of the types of lexical phrases will help in to find out which of these lexical phrases aid comprehension (i.e. for the purposes of listeners) and which aid production (for the speaker). This study also focussed on variety of occurrence of lexical phrases in these presentations (based upon the classifications mentioned above). The table no.1 shows the number of lexical phrases used frequently in a discourse by speakers. Each speaker used more than twenty lexical phrases. The table is divided into three columns: the first column shows total number of words used by each speaker in their presentation, the second column shows the number of lexical phrases (tokens) that have occurred more than once, and in the third column we find the (types) of lexical phrases used by each speaker.

5 Table 1: Use of lexical phrases Presenter No. of No. of words in lexical the text phrases used (tokens) 2000 54 No. of Category of the lexical phrases lexical used phrases used (types) 32 topic markers, topic shifters, summarisers, exemplification, relators, evaluators, asides 33 topic markers, topic shifters, summarisers, exemplification, relators, evaluators, asides. 32 topic markers, topic shifters, summarisers, exemplification, relators, evaluators. 26 topic markers, topic shifters, exemplification, qualifiers, summarizers. topic markers, topic shifters, relators, exemplification.

Richa

Sudarshan 1600

74

Arun

1284

77

Shraddha

1200

44

Renu

1000

49

22

The data presented in Table 1 showed that each speaker used a minimum of 27 lexical phrases, and many lexical phrases have been repeated. Richas discourse showed 54 tokens of lexical phrases, though the type of lexical phrases is 32. Similarly, for each user, the tokens were always higher than the types. The fifth column showed the category of lexical phrases used in these presentations. Further, all the categories specified by Dudley-Evans and Johns (1981) were available in these presentations. On the basis of the data presented in Table 1, it can be inferred that lexical phrases are used and play an important role in academic presentations. Further, the frequency of use of lexical phrases of different categories (as given by Dudley-Evans and Johns, 1981)) was given in order to show the frequency of each lexical phrase used by the speakers. In the table shown below numerical analysis of the frequency of the lexical phrases are given. Table 2: Category of lexical phrases
Categories Topic markers Topic shifters Summarizers Exemplifiers 6 4 2 4 7 6 6 6 6 2 1 3 6 2 3 24 20 20 Richa 3 Sudarshan 4 Arun 4 Sraddha 3 Renu 2 Frequency 16

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Relators Evaluators Qualifiers Asides Others total 3 3 1 0 2 56 7 6 4 2 1 74 6 4 4 5 4 77 2 3 2 2 0 44 3 4 3 1 3 49 21 20 14 10 10

From the above table it can be inferred that: Topic shifters, which are used to shift the topics, are used in 24 cases, which is the highest number of times compared to other phrases. The second most frequent set of lexical phrases appear to be Relators (21) which are used to relate the previous idea with the new idea. Then, Summarizers (20) which are used to sum up the point expressed by the speaker or the entire topic and Evaluators (20) that are used to evaluate the point expressed by the speaker. This is followed by Exemplifiers (20) that are used to exemplify the point made by the speaker with the help of an example and topic markers (16) used by the speakers to mark beginnings of topics. Further, Qualifiers (14) are used by the speakers, which qualify the point mentioned before; asides (10) are used very rarely. The use of other phrases appears to be very low. Table 3: Frequency of lexical phrases in academic presentations
TOPIC SHIFTERS RELATORS SUMMARIZERS EVALUATORS EXEMPLIFIERS TOPIC MARKERS QUALIFIERS ASIDES 24 21 20 20 20 16 14 10

It can be concluded that topic shifters and relators are the most frequently used categories in academic presentations. This is important because written and oral speech is very different. In a written discourse, a new paragraph signals a new idea, or a topic shift. In speech, such a facility is not available; therefore, the topic shift has to be encoded verbally through phrases and expressions. The speakers need these topic shifters in academic presentations because the argument has to be cogently and coherently presented. In the Qualitative Analysis we discuss the types of lexical phrases used, their functions and how speakers and listeners benefit from them. Lexical phrases were categorised with the help of the eight classifications mentioned earlier, to find out their functions and their benefits to the listeners and speakers. Then the frequency of the types of the lexical phrases most frequently used was tabulated as shown below:

Table 4: The use of lexical phrases in academic presentations

Topics Topic markers Richa The paper I am going to present, The paper is on, I want to recall what we have done, Sudarshan Let me give you a people recall, you remember, you know, to start with, you might recollect, The important point here is, let us look at this, now, so, Arun In the first place, I would like to, given this, keep in our mind,

Sraddha Before I begin with, Here I am going to present, lets read, But I was trying to show, lets again go back to

Renu Before begin with, let me begin with, Frequency I 14

Topic shifters

That I am going to deal with, Another point we need to consider is that, Now, I would like to draw your attention, Another conclusion, Another rule/view/thing he discusses,

Now, Now if we look into, now given this is the case, let us trace, but lets not jump, the only point,

Summarizers

Exemplifiers

So this is, that is about, So, we have, I will briefly discuss, As I have explained / we have discussed, By that it means Here the focus is on, take for an example, focus is that,

In other words, it means that, I have defined

So this is, it means that, to conclude this session,

This is what I have to tell about

Little bit, 21 now lets look at the, now, I would like you to look at the, now coming to, now they talk about, now looking at the, In other 13 words, Here the main focus was on, 13

For There example, few, as I have shown here, take these two, lets take an simple example, suppose you have,

are This

For shows example, that, It is clear, Well again,

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here, So you keep that in mind, we will discuss that later, this is, lets say that, can you guess why?, its like you know, if you say In fact he found As well as, out, Even I we will see cannot tell you how, about that, Focus is here that As you can see, As I said in the beginning, then certain thing we need to consider,

Relators

Evaluators

Further, and., you will have to, when we talk about, this actually, but for, kind of, you will have, further, Something that is not, If that has to happen, step by step

As is evident, it reminds me, You can find, ,

Therefore, 16 as you can see, that is rather than

Qualifiers

Besides that

In the Of course, sense that, What do we say, in the sense, you would see

It is quite obvious, even though she would, its noted that, In fact as I have already shown you, of course, how she expresses

But now 13 the question is, but people like, but this kind of, finally 10

Asides

Others

you know of course , it, I know I mean it, that, what is it I forgot to what is that From that mention, Am I moment, making sense to you will you, have, put me up with this while,

what is 0 called, And is 7 doing so

After, accounting the frequency of types of lexical phrases used by the speaker, the lexical phrases which benefit the speakers and listeners were identified. Some of the examples are given below:

Recall that the lexical phrases are:

9 Topic Markers Let me begin with Topic shifters, Now I would like to draw your attention to Relators We will see how, Therefore, Summarizers, so this is about Qualifiers, besides that.. in the sense Asides It reminds me, We see that, What do we say, Of Course. Evaluators, even though she would in fact as I have already shown you

Topic markers Topic markers are used for the beginning of the presentation. This helps in directing listeners attention to the speech being made and arrests the attention of the listeners. It is primarily a signal to the listener to pay attention to the following speech. Phrases that were used by the subjects for this purpose are given below: Before I begin the presentation, lets read a few lines from the poem, from Kamala Dass, (Shraddha) Before I begin this study let me talk a little bit about background that is during 60s and 70s the main theme of Second Language research has been Ah. On error analysis. (Renu) In the second case, the speaker uses the lexical phrase not only to signal the beginning of the speech but also to indicate what the speaker wants to do, before beginning the presentation and before coming to the main point of the talk. Lexical phrases help learners in understanding organization of the presentation; they also provide more listening cues to frame the entire outline of the presentation material. These lexical phrases help listeners in comprehension and speakers in presenting a topic.

Topic shifters Topic shifter phrases are used to change the topic and direct the listeners attention to a new point or argument. As pointed out earlier, a sudden shift to a new topic in writing is usually signalled by a new paragraph, however, this has to be done explicitly in speech. Examples of such use are: Here, I am going to present Kamala Das subverted the feudal ideology of thinking. Kamala Das represents an extremely significant turn in the history of Indian writing in English. (Shraddha) Now, coming to study as you can see in the hand out how the negotiation and the corrective feed back work. (Renu) The function of these phrases is to provide a clue to listeners that a topic has been introduced i.e. to grab their attention.

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Relators Relators are used to relate the point previously made by the speaker and to help the listeners to make connections with what the speaker is saying. Examples of such use are: So, in this case, as you can see I have already mentioned in the handout (Richa) Exemplifiers Exemplifiers simplify the difficult topic through examples so that learners will grasp the concept easily. Speakers use these phrases more often in order to make their topic clearer to the listeners. This shows that she finds that Madhav Das is also unable to give her the love she expected. (Shraddha) Lets take a simple example I went to the market, (Sudharshan) Take for an example, John gave a book to Mary (Richa)

Evaluators Evaluators are used by speakers to evaluate what is given in the topic and to present their own views. Examples of such use are: I think the limitation in the study so even I cannot tell you about.. (Richa) Asides Asides give presenters a kind of self- directed speech to deal with the task, to tell the speakers that they have gone off-track. Examples of such use are: Sorry I forgot to mention that

(Richa)

If the above-mentioned phrases such as, topic markers, topic shifters are not in the discourse then listeners will find it difficult to comprehend what is going on in the presentation. Everything would be abrupt, there would be no sequence and listeners would have difficulty in understanding what the speaker wishes to convey. There would be a comprehension gap between the listener and the speaker and the listener would not feel important, and they might even lose interest even if the topic is actually interesting. In addition, they provide a relaxed atmosphere to the listener, which in turn motivates them to participate in discussions; to ask questions, if they do not understand something; they help learners overcome their inhibitions and participate in the conversation and provide directional cues to the lecture with the addition of previous cues.

11 A presentation requires both the speaker and the listener to attend to the content presented. These phrases help the speaker in establishing the common ground between himself/herself and the listener so that the listener can understand what the presenter is talking about. They also help the listener to relax, and focuses their attention on certain crucial information. On the other hand, these phrases help speakers to communicate their intended meanings effectively. The speakers use difficult phrases to capture attention of the listeners. Moreover, these phrases guide the listener to look for markers, and doing so will train the listener to analyze the lexical phrases in the context, helping the listener to use them in their own presentations at a future date.

Affective markers and discursive speech Among these phrases it is often heard, Ah. Hmmm. But. Oh this is the problem now. These are called affective markers / lexical discursive speech. For instance, i) The fundamental questions were . Whether the error correction lead to learning hmmmwhether corrective modes of teacher or other caretakers were effective. (Renu) ii) Carroll and Swain say that learners should provide with explicitly feed back because ah it is more beneficial because it identifies the precise location and nature of erroneous performance. (Renu) The affective discursive markers that are mentioned above in the middle of the sentence imply that the speakers wanted to check whether he/she is going on the right track. They also assure the speakers that they are in control and that they have time. These phrases have the same function as self- directed speech but these phrases reflect the thought process of the speaker. They also form an important part of the discourse when people speak. This shows that lexical phrases are of different types but their function is the same i.e. to enhance the comprehension of the listener and to give them cues regarding the discourse. These phrases clearly reflect the Vygotskyan perspective, that humans are first, other regulated and later they become self-regulated. And whenever they face a difficult task, in order to control the task, they use extra-discursive markers. They give listeners a clue and help in their comprehension.

Style of Presentation
Three different styles have been cited by Dudley-Evans and Johns (1981) with reference to interactivity in lectures and presentation. In the present study, it was found that lexical phrases used by the speakers are of the conversational style. We can say this because we find many uses of such style, for instance: Before I begin with lets read a few lines. this shows that the speaker is helping the listener to relax and create an atmosphere, then

12 to draw the attention of the listeners. That I am going to deal with is a typical phrase of this style, to shift the focus to the main aim of the topic or what the topic is about. As you can see is a relator that relates the idea in a very simple way, not like in reading style, making comparisons the next X also comes from Y. These phrases are formal and students know these from their reading and writing classes.

Conclusion
The principal claim that can be stated from the above study is that lexical phrases are very frequent in spoken discourse especially in making presentations. These phrases help listeners in understanding the discourse and help speakers to check whether they are going on the right track. The preliminary study that was conducted, very strongly suggests that we should look very carefully at recurrent phrases and use what Sinclair calls "the idiom principle that is, the more we are able to predict the structure and patterns of occurrence of lexical phrases in either oral or written discourse, the more we will be able to prepare language users and learners to deal with them (Sinclair, 1991). What the present study has been able to show is a quick indication of the importance and centrality of these phrases in certain forms of academic discourse. We find that these phrases are an important part not only of highly specialized texts, but of basic communicative competence. We do not produce strings of complex noun phrases in our daily spoken discourse, but we do depend on prefabricated phrases of all kinds. If you look at a stretch of spoken discourse, it is not difficult to identify such phrases (you see; you know what I mean; sort of; as a matter of fact, etc.). And just as we can make out a strong case for the inclusion of lexical phrases in specialised discourse, it is not difficult to take out a similar case for the inclusion of such phrases in general English programmes. Teaching of any discourse therefore should take into account not only the principle of choice, but also the principle of idiom.

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References: Chaudron, C. and Richards, J. (1986). The effects of discourse markers on the comprehension of lectures. Applied linguistics, 7, (pg.113-127). Dudley-Evans, A. and T. F. Johns. (1981). A term teaching approach to lecture comprehension for overseas students in the Teaching of Listening Comprehension. London: The British Council. Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach: the state of ELT and a way forward. London: Language Teaching Publications. Nattinger, J. (1980). A lexical phrase grammar for ESL. TESOL Quarterly 14:337=44. Nattinger, J. (1986). Lexical phrases, functions and vocabulary acquisition. The ORTESOL JOURNAL, 7, 1-14. Nattinger, J. and Decarrico, J. (1988). Lexical phrases for the comprehension of Academic lectures. English for Specific Purposes, 7, 91-102. Nattinger, J. and Decarrico, J. (1990). Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J. 1991. Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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