OAP 18

177 easier even without instruction) and to generate a conclusion (So the effect of instruction is less higher after a time); well and thing convey a sense of uncertainty, underscoring the gradual and cumulative nature of the self-discovery process the audience has been invited to. Nevertheless, it appears feasible to suggest that, based on the location and the functions of these markers as discussed above, the use of single word markers could be tied to the presenter’s endeavour to achieve social collaboration.

178 The topic of OAP 18 is identical with that of the previous presentation, i.e. the role of instruction in the noticing of vocabulary. This similarity with regard to the source material and content should allow for meaningful comparisons within the analytical framework of the present study. As in OAP 17, the subject of the talk is declared at the beginning. However, unlike in the previous presentation, instead of brining the subject matter into the audience’s own reality by point out aspects of relevance and, thus, fostering audience involvement from the initial stages of the talk, the presenter of OAP 18 immediately proceeds to providing listeners with definitions. In fact, this difference is not only a matter of structuring, but the approach to imparting new information to the audience is remarkably divergent in these two presentations. Whereas in OAP 17 the presenter opted for the scenario of first addressing the audience through attempts at personalising content and then supplying them with a simplified paraphrase of a definition, the speaker delivering OAP 18 gives complex, apparently only slightly altered definitions and subsequently adds an example or two to make sure that the presented facts and the participants’ background knowledge do have an interface: Now, noticing means the conscious registration of the impact of forms and meanings in English. And noticing happens when sufficient processing occurs towards making a person conscious of a structure, which actually means that if you, for example, you are checked in a comprehension exercise, then you would notice certain grammar that is used in it. So it’s a record of the event before entering the long-term memory.

Another point of difference between OAP 17 and OAP 18 is that the presenter of the latter refrains from expressing an epistemic stance for most part of her talk. It is only in a handful instances in the lengthy summary of the research process that the confidence with which she handles research methodological terminology that a relative-expert-like epistemic stance may be inferred: The method of the research project was that it was

179 conducted in a Hungarian-English bilingual state school in Hungary, and the participants were two different treatment groups; Now, exposure occurred when participants were exposed to uninstructed items. There were also three post tests. The absence of any explicit explanation of these research methodological terms should imply that the speaker assumes her audience is equally familiar with the related procedural vocabulary.

Although the presenter pursues an apparently well-planned and logical framework for presenting her discussion of the results and findings, painstakingly attentive to stressing cause-and-effect relationships and systematically facilitating the speedy processing of key research data through the use of visual supplements, she demonstrates aspects of relevance only towards the end when she establishes connections between the research topic and her own area of interest: And I chose this because I am very much interested in how to teach students actually, in whether it is easier to get an input first, for example, if you go abroad and you want to learn a language, and a lot of people say it is easier to go there and live a while there, and by comprehending you’d be able to use instruction to some extent, but I don’t think that I completely agree with this because if you have a good learning method to memorise and practice grammar and then meet people who use the language on a native level, then you would be able to recognise it easily and you’d be able to learn it even more deeper and easier. From this rather protracted train of thought, however, it is gradually revealed that in a sentence originally meant to provide a personal rationale for her topic choice, the presenter chooses to use the second person pronoun not merely as a grammatical technique to word generalisations but to emphasise the relevance of the research focus in reference to the audience members’ own world. Furthermore, from this extended statement of

180 practical relevance, although disclosed only in a fragmentary clause, the presenter’s critical epistemic stance is also retrievable.

As has been suggested before, based on empirical evidence adduced for the purposes of the present project, the use of different types of interactive features is very often indicative of the presenter’s attitude to the audience in terms of audience engagement and social collaboration. With the exception of the final part analysed above in detail for rhetorical characteristics, the use personal deictics, mostly second person pronouns, is only sporadic in a large proportion of OAP 18. Moreover, it should be mentioned that, in a sense akin to OAP 17, the single-word markers so and now are extensively employed to signpost transitions and accentuate logical connections in the discourse.

This latter trait, coupled with a single occurrence of the imprecise quantifier pretty much, serves to illustrate the presenter’s highly didactic presentation style and her unfaltering enthusiasm about the subject.

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