Despite many empirical studies focusing on English as a second language (L2) learners' use of different metadiscourse markers in general academic English contexts, a systematic analysis of co-existing discourse strategies of boosting and hedging that contribute substantially to the dynamic flow of conversation in English for specific purposes (ESP) contexts is still missing.Understanding how ESP learners use boosters and hedges in conversation might provide valuable insights into their pragmatic competence.Therefore, this study scrutinizes the functions of boosters and hedges employed by information technology (IT) students in classroom argumentative debates related in content to their discipline.Boosters and hedges were identified and analysed using Sketch Engine.A total of 34 IT students participated in 8 debates in the course English for IT at Brno University of Technology.The whole corpus of the transcribed debates includes 20,052 tokens and 17,016 words.The research results revealed that while boosters were used by IT students to enhance persuasive communication, express stance, and share professional knowledge within their discourse community, hedges were employed to acknowledge the potential gaps in their understanding of the ever-changing nature of IT and mitigate face-threatening acts performed when asserting and rebutting in the debates.

With English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) teaching, it is expected that the skills students develop in an EAP course will transfer to the students' disciplinary courses.For this transfer to be maximized, it is important that students are motivated to transfer EAP learning.However, transfer motivation has received little attention in research on EAP education, so there is limited information regarding influential factors.To address this gap, this study investigated whether EAP students' transfer motivation was influenced by factors linked to transfer motivation in previous research in and outside EAP education: students' transfer-related expectations and beliefs, perceptions of learning, and perceptions of EAP course design.The participants were 313 first-year undergraduate students at a US university; these students were non-native English speakers and were enrolled in EAP courses.Data were gathered through a questionnaire survey, and statistical analyses revealed that the students' transfer motivation was influenced primarily by their transfer-related beliefs and expectations and to a lesser degree by their perceptions that the EAP course was similar to target contexts.A practical implication is that to promote EAP students' transfer motivation, instructors should help students develop transferconducive beliefs and expectations and raise their awareness of similarities between their EAP course and disciplinary courses.

This paper focuses on assessment-related expressions used to mark out important content in lecture discourse. Relevant to Higher Education (HE) contexts generally, such markers are even more necessary in English Mediated Instruction (EMI) contexts where students are mostly non-native English speakers. So far, little research has compared usage of those expressions by native and non-native English-speaking lecturers. A specialised corpus of engineering lectures delivered by native and nonnative speakers of English was compiled. Selected query markers were used to extract references to assessment made by the lecturer. The frequency of individual markers such as the words 'question' and 'exam' and the wider discourse moves which encompass them were analyzed in terms of their positioning with respect to the lecture content, the degree of probability involved, and typical phraseology. Those frequencies were then compared between native and non-native lecturers. Content of particular importance to students should be well marked. We might therefore expect assessment references to be particularly frequent and clearly marked especially when lecturers and students are non-native English speakers. However, findings suggest that a clear distinction between native and non-native speakers of English is not always easy to make and thus have relevance for pedagogical practices and for the professional development of teachers.

This study addresses a research gap concerning the role of questions in oral defences within the context of English as a lingua franca (ELF), using an analytical framework examining syntactic, prosodic, and pragmatic dimensions.Drawing from modified taxonomies by Athanasiadou (1991), Freed (1994), Schleef (2009), Chang (2012), and Chen (2018), the study explores questions in a Taiwanese corpus of successful master's thesis defences (TCTD) (Lin, 2020).The findings reveal questions as crucial rhetorical devices, distributed widely throughout the defence dataset, prompting interaction among participants.Despite disparities in frequency and functions, question use enables participants to fulfil distinct roles and duties, navigating interpersonal relationships and managing conflicts in oral defences.This study distils the interactional characteristics of question-response sessions, enhancing transparency for participants, especially in the context of English as an academic lingua franca.The research contributes to the field of EFL in spoken discourse, specifically addressing the use of questions in master's oral defences.Implications for English for academic purposes at the university level are discussed, emphasising the significance of understanding and participating in these interactions.

The Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) presentation has appeared as a new genre to meet the changing needs of graduate students in the academic world. Although some research is available on the generic structure and strategies characteristic of this genre, a comprehensive and in-depth account of this genre is lacking. Therefore, the objective of this study is to provide a holistic analysis of the rhetorical structure and linguistic features of this genre using 25 recordings of 3MT presentations. The focus is on simplification and engagement strategies used by PhD students to target a nonspecialist audience and engage them to build rapport with them. The findings indicate that simplification is achieved by omitting conceptually complex moves, conflating moves for brevity and simplicity, and defining scientific terms and concepts. In addition, engagement strategies such as attention-getting, explanatory, interactive and personalised strategies are used to capture and maintain the attention of the audience. The findings show that 3MT presentations have evolved into a unique genre with distinct features through recontextualisation which involves both simplification and engagement, enabling PhD students to share and promote their own research simultaneously, with a non-specialist and disciplinarily heterogeneous audience.

Spatial deixis (SD) is critical to students' comprehension as it allows the lecturer to direct students' attention towards purposeful objects in the classroom space in order to clarify meanings. Facilitating student comprehension has long been a concern for English-Medium Instruction (EMI) lecturers. However, the recent shift to online teaching has further challenged them, while EMI in online settings is still largely unexplored. Focusing on variations in lecturer's use of lexical SD in face-toface (F2F), online and blended learning settings, this study investigates EMI lecturer discourse from a multimodal perspective. A corpus of six EMI lectures delivered by the same lecturer -two for each lecture modality -was used to investigate how patterns of lexical SD co-occurring with gestures and technology-mediated actions are deployed to accomplish specific communicative functions in different lecture modalities. Findings showed that although the lecturer preferred the proximal SD this and here in all teaching modalities, in F2F they often co-occurred with pointing gestures, whereas in synchronous video lecture (SVL) they were more frequently accompanied by a wider range of technology-mediated actions. Furthermore, in SVL these actional multimodal SD patterns often co-occurred with visual words for introducing specialized vocabulary, which is likely to facilitate students' comprehension. Findings lend support to the integration of pedagogy, language and ICT tools in EMI lecturer training programmes.

This study attempted to examine the usefulness of specific Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) interventions in EAP writing courses. To this end, 75 intermediatelevel EAP learners were selected from three civil engineering classes at a public university in Iran and were randomly assigned to three groups including direct WCF group, indirect WCF group and control group. The experimental groups were provided with their appropriate WCF during 10 sessions. The researchers made an endeavor to determine the effectiveness of direct and indirect WCF strategies by examining the performances of the groups on a writing pretest and a writing posttest. The results highlighted the superiority of the feedback scenario over the nonfeedback scenario for improving the EAP learners' writing accuracy. Moreover, they underlined the fact that direct WCF was more beneficial for developing the writing skill in comparison with indirect WCF. The findings may highlight the major lines of research for the future empirical studies.

Contemporary ESP instruction tends to avoid traditional teaching methods such as translation, since these were seen as obsolete and believed to discourage communication skills. Attitude towards translation of specialized authentic texts, however, has been changing, mostly because of its potential as an activity that contributes to students' content and language knowledge and transferable skills, such as problem-solving, collaboration, decision-making, etc. Following the constructivism-based learning theories, this article presents the implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in a tertiary ESP context on a collaborative English-Serbian translation and peer review project of selected Wikipedia articles. It outlines the project execution phases and reports on the results of a questionnaire investigating students' evaluation of the project. The results indicate the respondents' overall satisfaction, especially regarding the acquired content knowledge, technical and teamwork skills, and a better grade gained in the course. The results also indicate room for improvement in both the organizational aspects of the project, and collaboration between ESP teachers and project participants, as this may lead to more proficient language competencies.

The article is based on a feedback survey and the author's teaching experience in finding a balance between authenticity and acceptability of study materials used in ESP courses for International Relations students. The results of the survey conducted among the students of the "Borders and Migration" Bachelor's course demonstrate that authentic articles and video clips on the current issues of foreign and migration policy agenda, although entailing engaging discussions, may trigger certain resentment and uneasy feelings. A survey among the course teachers also shows their awareness of the possible unexpected reactions when dealing with authentic materials on "hot topics." Nevertheless, both survey groups state that they prefer authentic materials to excessively edited texts and videos as they believe that "censored" papers may eventually distort the true vision of political realia and impede the formation of students' professional competencies. As a result, it is suggested that an ESP (International Relations) course should encourage an open discussion as a way of overcoming possible culture and expectation differences. It is also recommended to devise appropriate tasks for developing students' critical thinking skills. Additionally, ESP practitioners are instructed to organize a range of follow-up integration activities and carefully consider the balance of opinions presented to neutralize the adverse effects of the inciting content.

This paper examines an underrepresented genre of spoken clinical discourse -the clinical case presentation. Since little generic research into this peer-to-peer speech event has been conducted and also due to the fact that case presentations are often neglected by English for Medical Purposes (EMP) teachers, particularly those without backgrounds or experience in medicine, the author will explain both how and why case presentations are constructed and performed, particularly by clinicians who practice in non-English clinical milieus. This study is based upon a number of observations carried out at 10 clinical university hospitals in non-English normative parts of Asia, involving observations of a total of 36 distinct clinical case presentations performed in 10 different clinical departments. These observations were further supplemented by structured interviews with senior clinicians, instructors, training program designers, and presenters. One of the prominent features noted of expert presenters is that their presentations tend to extend well beyond the mere conveyance of clinical data and serve to express a narrative -the story of the patient's case -which produces a more holistic impact upon the audience. Features of narrative that are incorporated into this speech event will be discussed, followed by a discussion as to how the teaching and learning of case presentations might best be carried out in EMP classes.