Exploring language in Chinese college students’ English public speaking contests from a genre perspective and its implications for English Language Teaching
Exploring language in Chinese college students’ English public speaking contests from a genre perspective and its implications for English Language Teaching
Wei Xu
English Language Centre
Durham University
United Kingdom
With the popularization of English public speaking contests in China, there is an increasing need for a systematic guide for contestant candidates to produce structured persuasive speeches. This dissertation applies genre knowledge to the analysis of nine prepared speech text samples from the FLTRP Cup1 with the aim of identifying communicative purpose(s) and move
structures and analyses story frames as well as linguistic features in the focal texts. Qualitative interpretive analysis and computerized tools are used for rhetorical move and linguistic analysis and a discourse-based interview was implemented to confirm the findings. The findings demonstrate seven moves in the text samples including six obligatory moves and one optional move, each of which is accomplished by several steps. Through the interaction of the different moves, the ultimate communicative purpose is realized. Moreover, six narrative elements were determined to constitute a story frame in speeches and the whole or partial presence of the six narrative elements is related to the function of the story in a speech. In terms of linguistic features, personal pronouns are highly frequent in speech texts with the function of establishing a certain kind of speaker-audience relationship. Practical implications based on the results of the analysis for English speech pedagogy are also discussed. Overall, the study builds a tentative structural protocol for prepared speech texts in relation to these English public speaking contests in China.
Category: 2017 Thesis, Thesis
