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Speaking in Academic Contexts - 634185455045625000
Speaking in Academic Contexts - 634185455045625000
Speaking in Academic Contexts - 634185455045625000
Introduction
Advice
In seminars, the same as with writing, plan your talk. If you are going to get as
many marks for speaking as writing, spend as much time on it as your writing.
Written language is different from spoken language. If you just read out your
essay, no one will understand you.
Presenting a seminar paper
How to present a seminar paper. (Wallace, 1980, pp. 209-210)
It can be very boring to listen to something read aloud. Therefore what you must
do is follow the following points:
1. Decide on a time limit for your talk. Tell your audience what it is. Stick to
your time limit. This is very important.
2. Write out your spoken presentation in the way that you intend to say it.
This means that you must do some of the work of writing the paper
again, in a sense. Written language is different from spoken language
(See Features of academic spoken English). Your seminar presentation
will probably take less time than the written paper it is based on and you
cannot summarise on your feet.
3. In the seminar, speak from the outline notes. But bring both sets of
notes and your original paper to the meeting.
4. Look at your audience when you are speaking. Use this technique: First
read the appropriate part of your notes silently. Then look up at your
audience and say what you have to say. Never speak while you are still
reading. While you look at your audience, try to judge what they are
thinking. Are they following you? You will never make contact with your
audience if your eyes are fixed on the paper in front of you.
5. Make a strong ending. One way of doing this is to repeat your main
points briefly and invite questions or opinions.
Remember that listening is very different from reading. Something that is going to
be listened to has therefore to be prepared in a very different way from
something that is intended to be read. See:Language.
Features of academic spoken English
Introduction
Formal
In general this means that when you are speaking you should avoid colloquial
words and expressions.
Formality
Explicit
It is the responsibility of the speaker in English to make it clear to the listener how
various parts of the talk are related. These connections can be made explicit by
the use of different signalling words.
Hedged
Responsible
Complex
Spoken language is less complex than written language. Spoken language has
shorter words, it is lexically less dense and it has a less varied vocabulary. It
uses more verb-based phrases than noun-based phrases. Spoken texts are
longer and the language has less grammatical complexity, including fewer
subordinate clauses and more active verbs.
Complexity
Objective
Spoken language in general has more words that refer to the speaker. This
means that although the main emphasis should be on the information that you
want to give and the arguments you want to make, it is not unusual to refer to
yourself or your audience.
Objectivity