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To copy verbatim, paraphrase or summarize – listeners’ methods of discourse representation while recalling academic lectures

  • Haiping Wang

    Dr. Haiping Wang, PhD (SISU), is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai. Her main research themes include language testing and assessment, forensic linguistics, legal English and translation. She has published 20-odd research papers and a monograph in those fields.

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    and Guoxing Yu

    Dr. Guoxing Yu is Professor of Language Assessment at University of Bristol. He is an Expert Member of European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) and a member of British Council’s Assessment Advisory Board. His main research themes include language assessment and educational assessment. He was an Executive Editor of Assessment in Education for 13 years and is currently an Associate Editor of Language Assessment Quarterly.

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Published/Copyright: May 8, 2024

Abstract

It is unanimously agreed that comprehension of academic lectures is cognitively demanding; however, few studies have focused on a listener’s real-time discourse representation of a lecture. Based on the qualitative analysis of the verbal protocols, the present study investigated sixteen Chinese university students’ verbal recall of an academic mini-lecture to explore how they made sense of the lecture and represented its discourse when they recalled it episode by episode, and to what extent they differed in discourse representation. The results show that listeners’ discourse representation involved a range of cognitive processes such as paraphrasing, summarizing, and verbatim copying. Paraphrasing and summarizing were the main methods of discourse representation used by the participants when they verbally recalled the lecture. Those who correctly paraphrased more idea units recalled more content of the lecture. They were able to select and retain more idea units in their short-term memory, build more associations between the selected idea units, integrate them with the existing discourse structures and ensure contextual coherence in the construction of the local discourse structures. The findings of the study contribute to a better understanding of how listeners comprehend academic lectures and confirm that improving students’ paraphrasing skills and hierarchical discourse construction in recall are conducive to better comprehension of academic lectures.


Corresponding author: Haiping Wang, School of Foreign Studies, East China University of Political Science and Law, No. 555, Longyuan Road, Songjiang District, 201620 Shanghai, China, E-mail:

About the authors

Haiping Wang

Dr. Haiping Wang, PhD (SISU), is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai. Her main research themes include language testing and assessment, forensic linguistics, legal English and translation. She has published 20-odd research papers and a monograph in those fields.

Guoxing Yu

Dr. Guoxing Yu is Professor of Language Assessment at University of Bristol. He is an Expert Member of European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) and a member of British Council’s Assessment Advisory Board. His main research themes include language assessment and educational assessment. He was an Executive Editor of Assessment in Education for 13 years and is currently an Associate Editor of Language Assessment Quarterly.

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Received: 2023-02-05
Accepted: 2024-04-09
Published Online: 2024-05-08
Published in Print: 2025-03-26

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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