This article examines the language-related challenges that first-year students face when adjusting to the demands of English-medium higher education in Hong Kong. The article is based on the findings of a longitudinal study which tracked the university careers of 28 students from a range of backgrounds via in-depth, semi-structured interviews…

Language problems occurring in chemistry lectures given by English-speaking lecturers to Omani students are examined. All problems originated because of the limited common areas of reference between students and lecturers. It is suggested that the kind of learning of words that occurs in these lectures entails a very limited knowledge of these…

This study investigated whether undergraduate non-native speakers of English had difficulties comprehending information in a science lecture whose discourse organization went beyond a basic problem-solution structure. It found that the comprehension difficulties of the non-native speakers were also found among many of the native speakers. (25…

This study examined notes taken by 29 undergraduate native and non-native speakers of English during a lecture on commercial law. It found that native speakers took more detailed notes and more accurately recorded the hierarchical structure and principal elements of the lecture than non-native speakers. (48 references) (MDM)

Fourteen non-native speaking graduate and undergraduate students watched an authentic 16-minute videotaped engineering lecture and were asked to provide immediate recall summaries. It is concluded that students should be taught to listen to lectures in a more rhetorical and strategic way.(Author/VWL)

Twenty lectures by native speaker geology lecturers to nonnative speaker students were transcribed, and 921 instances of vocabulary elaboration were coded into a computer database according to 20 linguistic features. Analysis revealed noticeable variation among lecturers in language range/technicality, vocabulary elaboration, signalling, and use…

Strategic support is needed for nonnative speakers of English to understand university lectures better. The application of the techniques of genre analysis to a corpus of lecture introductions is reported. Teaching implications are considered. (25 references) (Author/LB)

Demonstrates the difficulty that English-as-a-second-language students experience in comprehending academic lectures, explores the lexical phrases that occur in several representative academic lectures and categorizes them in terms of the discourse functions they perform, and suggests ways of teaching such lexical phrases and functional categories…

Considers the role of interactive lecturing styles within the context of the Edinburgh University MBA program. Examples show a variety of ways of including student oral participation within the lecture framework. (Author/VWL)

A study compared American and international students' views about the usefulness of taking notes during English lecture presentations. Students differed in terms of their estimations of notetaking adequacy, time pressure experienced during listening and notetaking, and amount of notetaking. (Author/CB)

Reports on a study exploring patterns of discourse organization in seminar-type discussions. Analysis was made of patterns of sequential organization in discussions between English for academic purposes students in university seminars in the United Kingdom. Analysis revealed two patterns of organization: simple exchanges of pre-formed ideas and…

The dynamics of classroom behavior in a college lecture class were observed for five semesters. The questioning process analyzed question types and their effect on the development of discourse. Sample English-for-academic-purposes activities are given using the question typology. (LMO)