A corpus-based analysis of discourse strategy use by English-Medium Instruction university lecturers in Turkey

Ege F., YÜKSEL D., Curle S.

JOURNAL OF ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES, cilt.58, 2022 (AHCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 58
  • Basım Tarihi: 2022
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.jeap.2022.101125
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: English-medium instruction, Discourse strategies, Communicative potential, EMI lecturers, Higher education, HIGHER-EDUCATION, CLASSROOM DISCOURSE, LANGUAGE, STUDENTS, PERCEPTIONS, ATTITUDES, TEACHERS
  • İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This article reports a descriptive study that analyzed the discourse strategies used by Turkish university lecturers when delivering academic content in English. Through non-participant observation of English-Medium Instruction (EMI) lessons delivered by seven lecturers from five universities, a corpus of 13 h of recorded data was constructed. The lecturers' strategic language behaviors were identified and categorized based on the taxonomy developed by Do center dot rnyei and Scott (1995), later elaborated by S ' anchez-Garcia, (2019). Corpus-based analysis revealed that the lecturers employed a wide range of discourse strategies, the majority of which were fillers, self rephrasing, and code-switching. Thematic analysis showed that these discourse strategies offered two chief functions: (i) to cope with linguistic issues and (ii) to further students' comprehension. The results also revealed that most strategies only have medium communicative potential. This study highlights the necessity and significance of lecturer professional development to enhance the quality of EMI provision through the employment of discourse strategies that warrant greater communicative potential.