A Pragmatic Study on Teachers’ Feedback in EFL Classroom in China

EFL classroom teaching in China, no matter whether it is traditional one or a flipped one, is a dynamic communicative process by using English with the aim of learning it. The interactive discourse between the teacher and the student has its own pragmatic functions, especially the feedback given by the teachers which may influence the teaching and learning efficiency. In order to provide appropriate investigation resources, a corpus of 128,223 words with 36.65 hour-2199 minute real audiovisual college EFL classroom teaching transcripts is built. Taking the data of the resources as supporting evidence, this paper analyzes the pragmatic functions of EFL classroom feedback discourse, and proposes certain pragmatic strategies of increasing interactivity, which has certain pedagogical implications for EFL classroom teaching. 

A STUDY OF INTERACTIONAL METADISCOURSE ON NEWS ARTICLE ON THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON EDUCATION

Many different sources and platforms are introduced everyday as information content. News article remains one of the primary forms of textual written sources for the public. Even with the help of metadiscourse in writing, authors still face an issue of misunderstanding and comprehending from their readers. Further analysis is needed to understand the usage of metadiscourse in news article, as it will contribute to comprehending metadiscourse usage. The study aims to analyse metadiscourse on news article about Covid 19 impact on education. The objective of the study is to understand how interactional metadiscourse resources on news articles can be transcribed in terms of hedges and boosters, attitude-markers and engagement-markers, and Personal Markers. The study is conducted using Hyland (2005) metadiscourse strategies. The researchers decided to use interactional metadiscourse markers to analyse the text as interactional provides a clearer understanding. The study found that the attitude marker is the highest content found in the news article, a percentage of 45.45%. The second highest rate of frequency is hedges and boosters throughout the article. Not only that, the study found that the article contains all interactional markers usage in the text. For future researchers, they should focus on an in-depth analysis on the other side of metadiscourse which is interactive discourse markers and how it can be transcribed. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/820/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

El humor como hecho pragmático en español

En este artículo se analiza la habilidad metapragmática del humor en español. Considerando que se trata de un hecho pragmático (Ruiz Gurillo, 2006) como la metáfora o la ironía, se profundiza en las habilidades metapragmáticas que favorecen tanto su creación como su comprensión (Ruiz Gurillo, 2016). De este modo, el punto de vista del hablante/escritor ha de complementarse necesariamente con el del oyente/lector. Con el fin de ilustrar tales aspectos teóricos, se expondrán algunas de las habilidades metapragmáticas que pone en marcha tanto el cómico a la hora de producir monólogos humorísticos como el hablante de la conversación espontánea. El análisis de un género propiamente humorístico, el monólogo, de carácter planificado, público e interaccional se completa con el de un género no humorístico, la conversación espontánea, que es de carácter no planificado, privado y principalmente interactivo. Ello permite ilustrar algunos de los contextos en los que se usa y se infiere humor en español. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the metapragmatic ability of humor in Spanish. Taking into account that it is a pragmatic phenomenon (Ruiz Gurillo, 2006), such as metaphor or irony, this research delves into the metapragmatic abilities that promote not only its creation but also its comprehension (Ruiz Gurillo, 2016). Therefore, the speaker/writer’s perspective may be complemented with the listener/reader’s point of view. In order to illustrate these theoretical aspects, we will analyze some of the metapragmatic abilities that both comedians in monologues and speakers in conversation carry out while using humor. Firstly, a humorous genre, i.e. the monologue, will be described as a planned, public and interactional discourse. Secondly, a non-humorous genre, i.e. the spontaneous conversation, will be presented as an unplanned, private and interactive discourse. In sum, this research illustrates some contexts in which humor is used and inferenced in Spanish.

COHESIVE MARKERS IN SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE: CASE IN INDONESIAN FACEBOOK CONVERSATIONS

The emergence of social media as a new channel of communication has produced a new form discourse which has different characteristics compared to the formerly established conventional discourses. These differences do not only lie in how the messages are delivered but also in their structural components which contribute to the unity of the text, namely cohesion and coherence. Cohesion, as the marker of coherence, is realized by language units (words, phrases, or clauses) known as cohesive markers which indicate the relationship between parts of discourse either grammatically or lexically. This article aims at describing the composition and distribution of cohesive markers within the Facebook conversations along with their roles in determining the characteristics of the discourse. The results show that the cohesive system of Facebook conversations are dominated by references, ellipses, repetitions, and conjunctions. The frequent appearances of certain referential cohesivemarkers indicate Facebook conversations as typical of interactive discourse whereas numerous ellipses and particular conjunctionsreflectthe informal mode of communication carried out through the social media.On the other hand, various repetitions show the existence of topical cohesionwithin the conversations.

WHAT IS NEWTON’S LAW OF INERTIA?: THE USE OF QUESTIONS IN SCIENCE LECTURES

An inability to recognize discourse structure is seen by applied linguists as one of the main problems of non-native speaker students in understanding science lectures in English. In this circumstance, the use of interactive discourse structure like questions is salient as it is likely to aid comprehension. This research investigated the use of questions in science lectures in English in a university in Malaysia. By using conversation analysis (CA), a science lecturer was selected, video-recorded, and interviewed during two formal teaching hours. The findings show that the lecturer used a large quantity of display and referential questions. Display questions, comprising questions with ‘do’, ‘have’ and to be ‘is’ and ‘are,’ were posed to encourage participation and check students’ understanding toward the materials at hand. Meanwhile, referential questions, mostly started with ‘what’ or ‘what do you think’, ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘where’, were employed to guide the students to understand science concept and stimulate critical thinking skills. This research, thus, suggested science lecturers to use questions in various types and ways to foster learning.Keywords: questions, types, functions, science lecture APAKAH HUKUM INERSIA NEWTON?:PENGGUNAAN PERTANYAAN DALAM PERKULIAHAN SAINS AbstrakKetidakmampuan dalam mengenali struktur wacana dilihat oleh ahli linguistik terapan sebagai salah satu masalah utama mahasiswa bukan penutur asli dalam memahami perkuliahan sains dalam bahasa Inggris. Dalam keadaan ini, penggunaan struktur wacana interaktif seperti pertanyaan sangat penting karena akan membantu memahami perkuliahan. Penelitian ini mengkaji penggunaan pertanyaan dalam perkuliahan sains dalam bahasa Inggris di satu universitas di Malaysia. Dengan menggunakan analisis percakapan (CA), seorang dosen sains dipilih, direkam, dan diwawancara selama dua perkuliahan formal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa dosen banyak menggunakan jenis pertanyaan display dan referensial. Pertanyaan display, yang terdiri dari pertanyaan dengan ‘do’, ‘have’, dan ‘is’ serta ‘are,’ berfungsi untuk mendorong partisipasi dan memeriksa pemahaman mahasiswa terhadap materi yang disampaikan. Sementara itu, pertanyaan referensial, dimulai dengan ‘what’ atau ‘what do you think’, ‘how’, ‘when’ dan ‘where’, digunakan untuk memandu mahasiswa memahami konsep sains dan merangsang keterampilan berpikir kritis. Oleh karena itu, hasil penelitian ini dapat menjadi pertimbangan para dosen sains untuk menggunakan berbagai jenis pertanyaan dengan berbagai cara untuk membantu memahami perkuliahan.Kata kunci: pertanyaan, jenis, fungsi, perkuliahan sains

Dimensions of variation across Internet registers

This paper presents a study that sought to identify the dimensions of variation underlying a corpus of Internet texts, using Biber’s (1988) multi-dimensional (MD) analysis framework. The corpus was compiled following the method proposed by Biber (1993), according to which the size of each register subcorpus should be determined based on the linguistic variation across the texts. The corpus was tagged using the Biber Tagger and the features were counted and submitted to a factor analysis, which suggested three factors. The factors were interpreted as three dimensions of variation: involved, interactive discourse versus informational focus; expression of stance: interactional evidentiality; and expression of stance: interactional affect. The amount of register variation captured by the register distinctions on the dimensions ranged from 8.7% to 57.1%. Dimension 1 corroborate the oral/involved versus literate/informational distinction defined in previous MD studies of non-Internet registers, whereas Dimensions 2 and 3 highlight the important role played by stance in social media.