Modality and code glosses to transition from academic written to oral discourses: An exploratory study

Abstract

This article presents the results of a pilot study carried out in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) class for Ph. D. programs at a private university in Bogotá. The study sought to identify which mechanisms students use in oral presentations (OPs) to express content that was originally written in essays and how such mechanisms mark differences of performance in the OPs. To identify the mechanisms, a discourse analysis comparison of eight pairs of essays and their corresponding OP transcripts was performed. Changes to the expression of modality and the inclusion of code glosses were two mechanisms used to make such a transition. Further submechanisms were also identified. This analysis includes the linguistic mechanisms used to modify sentences, their pragmatic appropriateness, and their grammatical correctness. The analysis shows that high-achievers more consistently used code glosses and modifications to the expression of modalization than their low-achieving counterparts.