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Language Learning, Discourse and Cognition: Studies in the tradition of Andrea Tyler
Edited by Lucy Pickering and Vyvyan Evans
[Human Cognitive Processing 64] 2018
► pp. 37–62

Chapter 2
Discourse management strategies revisited

Building on Tyler’s early insights regarding international teaching assistant comprehensibility

This chapter revisits Tyler’s early research on ITA comprehensibility while also considering recent work on instructional discourse. The purpose of the study is to explore Tyler’s early conclusions regarding the sources of listeners’ perception of incoherence in ITA classroom discourse. Following Tyler’s methodology, the data collected consists of videotapes of the same lab session taught by four different TAs, two native speakers and two non-native speakers. The transcripts of the lab sessions are analyzed in terms of the use of discourse management strategies to determine the differences between native speaker and non-native speaker TAs. Finally, we discuss how those differences may affect ITA comprehensibility as well as implications for ITA training.

Keywords: intelligibility, international teaching assistants, instructional discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical assumptions
  • 3.Tyler’s early work on discourse management strategies of ITAs
    • 3.1Repetition
    • 3.2Discourse markers
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Data collection
    • 4.2Data analysis
  • 5.Analysis and discussion
    • 5.1Repetition
    • 5.2Discourse markers
      • 5.2.1The use of and
      • 5.2.2The use of and then
      • 5.2.3The use of so
      • 5.2.4Macro-level discourse markers
  • 6.Limitations
  • 7.Recommendations for future research
  • 8.Implications for ITA training
  • 9.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 20 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.64.03tap
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Attardo, Salvatore & Lucy Pickering
2018. Afterword. The theoretical and applied foundations of Andrea Tyler’s approach to the study of language. In Language Learning, Discourse and Cognition [Human Cognitive Processing, 64], ► pp. 301 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Bibliography. In Pragmatics and its Applications to TESOL and SLA, ► pp. 198 ff. DOI logo

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