A corpus study on topic shifting discourse macro markers in TED talks

Year 2020, Volume: 7 Issue: 3, 229 - 239, 31.12.2020

Hamideh Hamdi

https://doi.org/10.30900/kafkasegt.742904

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Huge number of students enroll at universities in countries other than their own; in majority of these universities the courses are taught in English which might be challenging for whom English is not their native language. These students need to be trained adequately to be able to listen and follow the lectures to be successful in their academic studies. In EFL classes TED Talk speeches can be used to prepare students to real life lectures at the universities since they have a resembling structure to university lectures and are authentic materials that can be reached easily. In both university lectures as well as TED Talk speeches discourse markers are widely used that need to be identified and introduced in EFL classes since they play important roles in academic lectures, and assist listeners to get the idea what the speaker intends to do. Macro markers are used in lecture discourses by speakers to arrange their speeches and help the audience follow them. |Topic shifting macro markers are vital since they signal the listener that the topic and flow of the speech is going to change. This study aimed to find out what discourse macro markers are used in TED Talk speeches to change topics or subtopics. For this reason 18 speeches were manually analyzed to note down the topic shifting markers. Later the frequency of the found markers were checked on the related corpora. It was revealed that using pauses along with ‘so’ and ‘now’ were the most frequently used markers to shift the topics or subtopics.

Keywords

discourse markers, macro makers,, topic shifter

A corpus study on topic shifting discourse macro markers in TED talks

Abstract

Öğrencilerin büyük bir çoğunluğu kendi ülkelerindense diğer ülkelerin üniversitelerine kayıt yaptırırlar, kayıt yaptırılan bu üniversitelerin çoğunda dersler İngilizce öğretilir ki bu durum ana dili İngilizce olmayan öğrenciler için zorlayıcı olabilir. Bu öğrencilerin akademik çalışmalarında başarılı olabilmeleri, dersleri takip edebilmeleri ve dersleri dinleyebilmeleri için yeterli şekilde dinleme beceri uzerine eğitilmeler gerekmektedir. Yabancı dil sınıflarda Ted konuşmaları üniversite derslerine benzeyen yapıları ve kolayca erişilebilen gerçek materyaller olmaları sebebiyle üniversitelerde öğrencileri gerçek hayata hazırlamak için kullanılabilir. Yabancı dilin İngilizce olduğu sınıflarda tanımlanması ve tanıtılması gereken söylem işaretçileri konuşmacının ne yapmak istediği fikrini kavrayabilmede dinleyicilere destek sağladıkları ve akademik derslerde önemli bir rol oynadıkları için hem üniversite derslerinde hem de Ted konuşmalarında geniş çapta kullanılır. Konuşmacılar tarafından konuşmalarını düzenlemek ve dinleyicilerin onları takip etmelerine yardım etmek için ders söylevlerinde makro isaretçiler kullanılır. Konu değiştiren makro isaretçiler dinleyiciye konunun ve konuşmanın değişeceği sinyalini verdikleri için son derece önemlilerdir. Bu çalışma Ted konuşmalarında konuları ya da alt konuları değiştirmek için kullanılan makro söylem işaretçilerini ortaya çıkarmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu nedenle, 18 Ted konuşması konu değiştiren işaretçileri kaydetmek için el ile analiz edilmiştir. Sonrasında bulunan işaretçilerin sıklık derecesi ilgili karporada kontrol edilmiştir. “ Bu yüzden “ ve “ Şimdi “ ile beraber kullanılan duraklamalar, konuları ya da alt konuları değiştirmek için kullanılan en sık isaretçiler olduğu ortaya çıkartılmıştır.

Keywords

Konu deiştiren işaretler, Makro işaretlerı

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