Linking adverbials in spoken academic presentations among low English proficiency students

Abstract

Linking Adverbials play an important role to create cohesion and ensure the logical and persuasive flow of an oral academic presentation. However, there were very few studies focusing on the students’ spoken corpus of oral academic presentation especially when dealing with low English proficiency students in Polytechnic level. The overall goal of this study was to investigate the use of linking adverbials in oral academic presentations among POLISAS students. This study aims to examine the kind of adverbials used by the students, when they use them and for what purposes and lastly, what problems do the students face in using adverbials in oral academic presentations. This study is a corpus-based study consisting of 20 academic group presentations that were audio-taped and transcribed manually, and analyzed using Antconc software version 3.2.4w. The recordings were based on the presentations of the students from semester three and five. Results had indicated that the students only employed five different categories of linking adverbials which are enumerations and additions, apposition, result or inference, contrast or concession and summation adverbials. The analysis also revealed that the students tend to use simple and singleword adverbials as it was easier to memorize and pronounce. The students used these five types of adverbials to fulfill different functions such as to start and end the presentation, to give further elaboration and instances, to signal the next step to the audience, to show contrast and also, to sum up the presentations. It also identifies some problems such as avoidance of using adverbials and wrong use of adverbials due to the linguistic difficulties commonly faced by students of low English proficiency level. This study suggests teachers provide scaffold to students and give sufficient guidelines on the functions of linking adverbials in oral academic presentations to the students so as to help the low English proficiency students to improve their presentation skills.