Listening week nine

Digressions

Adapted from Unit 8: English for Academic study

Reasons for digressions

On the module so far we've looked at the importance of organising information. However, even where lecturers organise their information well, and explicitly, they often move away from the main topic for a short time before returning to it. These are called digressions. There are a number of reasons why lecturers might digress during their lectures.

to give a short definition of a new technical term
to give a reference to a book on the topic
to comment on events happening outside the lecture
to comment on the point they are making
to give general information about the course
to give a personal anecdote to illustrate a point

Discussion

Which of the following expressions do you think mark important information, and which could be used to introduce a digression?

The main point to note is... - By the way... - This leads us on to... - Incidentally... - Before I forget... - On a related topic...

Think about your own experience of listening to lecture. Discuss the following questions in small groups.

Can you think of any digressions you have heard?
Do you think digressions are useful or confusing?
Can you think of any signposting language words or phrases that lecturers use to signal the beginning or end of a digression?

Task 2 Identifying digressions

You will read the transcript of a digression from a lecture on linguistics. The speaker is talking about the problem of embedded words.

The research that I’ve been involved in has been looking at factors responsible for our being able to cope successfully with this problem of embedded words, the fact that we’re not constantly going off in the wrong direction being fooled by the sounds into hearing something that isn’t there. Let’s just try to think about what factors might be helping us not to go wrong. I’ve got three possible hypotheses here and again these are in the handout that I’ll be giving you and you don’t need to write these down, you’ll get this text later on. OK, the question is then, how are we successful most of the time in deciding where word boundaries come?

Why does the lecturer digress? Choose one of the reasons from Task 1.
How do you think the lecturer’s delivery might change as she digresses?

Do you think she would speak:

1 more slowly 2 more quickly 3 at the same speed?

Do you think she would speak:

1 more quietly 2 more loudly 3 at the same level?

Do you think she would pause:

1 before the digression 2 after the digression 3 before and after?

How do you think she would say the word ‘OK’?

Here is a digression from a lecture on social learning. Listen and read the extract. Then answer the questions.

What digression does the lecturer make and why?
How does she mark the beginning and end of digressions? Think about the questions relating to the lecturer’s delivery after the digression above.

My first set of examples come from – and I’m going to talk about some fairly classic experiments in this lecture, but I would point out before I go on that there is a really excellent chapter on this subject in Shettleworth’s book, which is referred to in the reference list for this lecture. Sara Shettleworth has a superb chapter on social learning. It’s called ‘Learning from others’. It’s very up-to-date, very thoughtful, very comprehensive, and I’m just going to mention just a few of the examples that she mentions. But if you seriously want to think about this area, and it involves many complexities, her chapter is a very good place to go. Anyway, some of the best-known work on social learning, or putative social learning, in rats, in animals, are about food preferences. These are examples of learning the significance of stimuli, learning what foods are good to eat and what foods are bad to eat.

Notepad

Task 3 - Practice: questionnaire design

In the next lecture the speaker is talking about how to design questionnaires. In this extract he is talking about issues to do with writing good questionnaires.

Listen to Part 1 and make notes on the main points of the lecture.
Compare your notes with another student, then discuss the following questions:
1. Did you understand the points the lecturer made?
2. Did you make any notes on his digression?
3. Did you recognise when he started digressing? Finished digressing?
Listen again and pay attention to the digression. Answer the following questions with your partner.
1. Why does the lecturer digress? Look back at the reasons in Task 1.
2. What exactly will the students be required to do in their assessment?
3. What will they not do?
4. Why might the current students think they have to design a questionnaire?
5. Why has the lecturer changed the assessment from last year?
6. How did you recognise the beginning and end of the digression?
Listen again and read the transcript below. How does the lecturer mark the beginning and end of the digression? Does the lecturer alter their delivery in any on the ways described earlier?

Transcript

Now, I'm going to show you lots of examples of different types of questions that you can ask, and here are some very general design issues, though. Your questions, they need to be precise, as you'll see in a moment. They need to be well-ordered. Incidentally, - sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier - the assessment will, I think, be announced next week, formally, but what it's going to be is a case study. Basically you're going to be asked to evaluate, to comment, to appraise. And it'll be a case study describing a, sort of, typical market research process, but it will also include data. There will be data that you can analyse to support your case, and you will be able to analyse it, basically, in any way you want. That'll be up to you. Somebody was asking earlier about will we have to do a questionnaire, and they've probably been talking to people last year who did it and where everybody - basically every single individual - ran a questionnaire and it basically got out of hand. It was extremely difficult to mark because people were producing huge volumes of stuff. But this session now is just basically to introduce you to how this sort of data is collected, but you won't be doing this as part of the assessment.

So, your questions, they need to be precise, and I'm going to show you some examples of good and bad questions in a moment. You need to decide very carefully, I think, on the ordering. I think there's really not an excuse for it these days, in a sense, for getting this part of it wrong and certainly presentation is very important so we'll talk a little bit about presentation and how you're able to order your questions to make sure that you get, well, there's different schools of thought, but - to make sure that you get optimum response.

Task 4 - Practice: questionnaire design continued

In Part 2 of the lecture on questionnaire design, the lecturer is discussing what researchers should do before they carry out market research using questionnaires.

Before you listen, discuss this situation in small groups.

Groups of students at a university language centre have to carry out a survey on British people’s attitudes to different aspects of life in the UK. in order to do this they have to prepare a questionnaire. Their lecturer gives them a list of things they should do and should not do in carrying out this survey.

As a group, prepare a list of dos and don’ts you think the lecturer gave the students.

Be careful what kind of questions you ask people in the street.

Listen to Part 2 and fill in the blanks from the transcript below, then answer the questions

Comprehension questions

What instructions were students given about how they should carry out the survey?
What topic did one group choose?
What mistake did the students make?
What mistake had the lecturer made?
Why should students pre-test the questionnaire?
What kind of information might students get from pre-testing (piloting)? Complete the gaps below with one to four words in each space.

Super-fast fibre should reach all homes within the next three years.

Task 5 - Integrated rural development

You are going to hear an extract from a lecture on the history of development economics. The speaker is talking about a development programme known as integrated rural development (IRD).

5.1 - Before you listen, look at the list of activities below. Which of these activities do you think would help rural development?

Introducing new varieties of rice
Combating malaria
Cleaning up the water supply
Building new roads
Teaching adults to read
sending foreign experts on short-term contracts
Providing Land Rovers
documenting how the donors’ money is spent

Compare your ideas with another student.

5.2 - Listen to the extract. Which of the activities above did the lecturer mention? Compare with your partner.
5.3 - Listen again and answer the following questions. Compare with your partner.
1. What was the basic idea of IRD?
2. Why did the project organisers introduce measures to combat malaria and clean up the water?
3. What is the effect of building new roads
4. How might adult literacy help?
5. What was good about the IRD programme?
6. Why was IRD not implemented in all parts of Kenya?
7. The speaker says the programme was a success, but qualifies the success. What was the problem with the programme?
8. What did the speaker find in his office?
9. What did he do with the documents?
10. What did the speaker think when he looked at the documents?

Notepad

5.4 - Look at your answers to the questions in the last task. Write the question number beside the point it corresponds with.

1. Commenting on the IRD programme

2. Giving an extended example of how IRD might work in practice

3. Explaining the rationale behind IRD

4. Digressing

5. Drawing a conclusion

5.5 - Listen again and read the transcript. What do the phrases mean? Compare your ideas with your partner.

what on earth - on the grounds - increase their yields
give you synergy - that compliments the agricultural measures
my goodness - more than the sum of the parts
it all went in the skip - with the benefit of hindsight
a package of assistance - a scale-neutral technology

Which of these phrases do you think are:

used in spoken English only?
used in both spoken and written English?
useful to you in your degree subject?
useful to you in everyday English?

Compare your ideas with your partner.

Task 6 - Microskills: common expressions in lectures

In this activity, you will practise note-taking from short lecture extracts. In addition, you will focus on a number of expressions that commonly occur in lectures.

This extract is from a lecture on politics. The lecturer is discussing the issue of whether states are free to act as they please, or whether there are constraints on the way they act. Listen and complete the notes.

Listen again and complete the extract with one to four words in each space.

This extract is from a lecture on office design. Listen and complete the notes.

Listen again and complete the extract with one to four words in each space. Discuss what the expressions in the spaces mean with your partner.

Extract 3 is from a lecture on the history of development economics. The lecturer is discussing the impact of the 1982 debt crisis on financial assistance to developing countries. Listen and complete the notes.

Listen again and complete the extract with one to four words in each space. Discuss what the expressions in the spaces mean with your partner.

Summary

In this unit you have discussed why lecturers sometimes mark digressions, and looked at examples of the digressions they make. You have practised following the lecturer's main points. You have also seen a number of expressions commonly used in lectures.

Teacher's notes

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