OAP 04

125

126 overview of the components of motivation. Then I’m going to describe the method. After that I’m going to describe the results and the implications of the survey.

When explicating the most essential concepts constituting the theoretical foundations of the study reported on in the chosen article, the presenter tries to utilise any possible prior the knowledge the audience might possess about the subject: The first is instrumental motivation. Anyone of you knows what it means? Hm? This move may also be regarded as a conscious attempt to engage the audience and, by sharing roles and voices, to enable members of the audience to function as co-repositories of knowledge.

After a few moments of silence, however, this effort does not seem to produce the desired result in this respect. Therefore, the presenter resorts to supplying the answer herself, and, in doing so she displays a level of familiarity that secures her a position closer to the relative expert than the relative novice on the epistemic stance continuum:

So it is about how students ... how they’re going to benefit from the language, how they are motivated to learn the language.

It is also noteworthy how persistent the speaker appears to be in creating conditions that promote social collaboration: As I’ve already said, the second type may be defined as (...). I can tell you more if anyone wants to know more about these types. It is only the course tutor who briefly intervenes and, citing concerns related to the shortage of time, pre-empts the development of any closer cooperation between presenter and audience in constructing knowledge jointly. Nevertheless, the presenter’s constant cognisance of the audience needs, limited background knowledge or wish to receive additional elucidation is observable in her check-back-like questions later on as well, along with summarising assertions and references to support items: The aim of the study was to measure students’ motivation, which you can see in the 1^st table. And should I mention how they proceeded? Right. Then after a few seconds of apparent hesitation,

127 she again succumbs to the tutor’s admonition that she is not supposed to enter into details to such an extent. This high degree of attention to the audience’s ability to process the information transmitted and to think in unison with presenter is evidenced not only when she discusses the research process but when she gives an account of the results and discussion: First year students were much more self-confident about their language skills. Anyone have any idea as to why? Her reaction to the response given by a member of the audience sounds very supportive and undoubtedly strengthens an atmosphere of collaboration: Yes. I think the same. Actually, I think that nowadays it’s much more different. What is more, as the latter part of the utterance shows, the presenter exploits the situational potential of the interaction to add a standpoint of her own on the issue, thereby enhancing credibility and, ultimately, consolidating her stature as a relative expert.

At the same time, interestingly enough, the presenter, in one instance, invites contribution from the audience for a completely different reason. Instead of gathering views from the audience as a lead-up to articulating her own take on the matter, she is genuinely seeking insightful comments from the audience in the hope of receiving some clues to a riddle she cannot resolve herself, either. This approach unquestionably furthers the speaker’s endeavour to construct discourse in a way that allows for

‘multiple roles, voices and levels of expertise’ (Morita, 2000, p. 292): The next point is attitude to English speakers. Grammar school students have a positive attitude as opposed to pupils at the other school types. I don’t know if anyone has an idea as to why ... I don’t know. Although the interactive nature of the presentation is maintained throughout the talk, towards the end the presenter formulates implications and subjective comments that straightforwardly serve the purpose of reinstating herself as a strongly opinionated quasi-expert: Teachers shouldn’t give up motivating their students.

128 I think nowadays it happens very often that students are not motivated to continue foreign language learning. She also attaches a critical sentence: The author doesn’t explain how these students should be motivated.

With regard to some other rhetorical features OAP 4 contains, it is well worth noting that it is not only at the beginning of the presentation that the speaker gives indications of the structure of her talk, but she periodically makes allusions to the main structural units as she reaches them. Besides signposting each major unit, the presenter also pays attention to maintaining and strengthening coherence by the consistent use of cataphoric references (e.g. As I’ve already said, second type is ...; As I’ve mentioned grammar school students are very interested in English speaking cultures). Although Morita (2000) does not mention discourse coherence as an indicator of expert-like conduct during an oral presentation, one cannot help linking such a high level of control over maintaining coherence to a convincing degree of awareness of the logical and sequential relations that obtain between the main content points of the topic the presentation is based on, thus further fortifying the presenter’s image as a dependable quasi-expert. In line with this self-expressing tone and planned control over discourse construction, it seems quite natural that the prevalent interactive feature exponent is the first person singular pronoun, mostly co-occurring with down-toning adverbs.

129