Summarising Katrien Deroey’s corpus work: EAP coursebooks teach neat ‘useful phrase’ lists, but real lecturers flag importance with markers like ‘Remember…’, ‘The point is…’, ‘The key thing is…’, often in reduced connected speech. Coursebooks under-teach them.
Classroom implications
- Check materials against real lecture transcripts (BASE, MICASE) or local lecturers’ recordings.
- Teach importance markers explicitly, including how they sound in connected speech (linking, elision, intonation).
- Have learners use the same markers in their own presentations.
Sources (as given)
Deroey, K. (2021) NFEAP talk; Gilmore (2015) “Research into practice…”, Language Teaching 48(4). Further reading (Claude): Deroey & Taverniers (2012) on lexicogrammatical relevance markers in lectures, English for Specific Purposes.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- IELTS Listening Part 4 is a lecture; answers often follow exactly these markers. Train “marker → answer coming” as a listening strategy.
Connections
Bottom-up listening instruction alone is not enough · Field’s process model of listening - eight priorities · Check vocabulary intuitions with corpus tools