Lectures in English as a Lingua Franca - Interactional Features
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Chemical Technology |
D4 Julkaistu kehittämis- tai tutkimusraportti tai -selvitys
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Author
Date
2012
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
233 + app. 6
Series
Aalto University publication series SCIENCE + TECHNOLOGY, 19/2012
Abstract
Internationalization is one of the strategic goals of universities and other higher education institutions in Finland. This tends to be transferred to English-medium instruction (EMI) and English degree programs. This "Anglicization” has raised concerns and discussion despite its perceived benefits. The aim of this study was to investigate an international Master’s Program in the field of engineering and to explore students’ perceptions of lectures and their comprehension within this Master’s Program. These lectures were further examined in order to shed light on what linguistic features used in English as a lingua franca (ELF) lecturing influence students’ perceptions. This exploratory, descriptive case study takes a phasal approach to obtain a holistic view on this Master’s Program. The findings of the study are based on authentic data: video-recorded lecture material, their transcriptions, and surveys. These surveys contain lecture evaluations provided by the students immediately after attending them. Guided by the student evaluations, an analysis based on genre analysis and discourse analysis was conducted to locate the linguistic differences of these lectures. The results indicate that students’ perception of lectures relates to the use of interactionalfeatures regardless of the lecturers’ perceived English skills. Those lectures students found accessible contained more interactional features than those lectures students found challenging. Additional results, contrary to prior studies, also show that the use of interactional features in native language (Finnish) lecturing is notably lower than in ELF lecturing. Furthermore, the comparison of student achievements when lecturing in the Master’s Program was in Finnish with the student achievements from the ELF lectured program showed slightly higher results in the ELF lectured program. Conclusions drawn from these results suggest that when lecturing in a non-native language, lecturers attempt to ensure the audience’s comprehension through various linguistic devices, interactional features being one of them. Therefore, ELF lectures do not have an adverse effect on lecture comprehension or course results.Description
A parallel copy of this study is published as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki. This academic dissertation is to be publicly discussed December 14, 2012 in Helsinki.
Keywords
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Lingua Franca, ELF, lectures, student perception, interactional features, English-medium instruction (EMI)
