LECTURE INTRODUCTION: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN STUDENTS’ BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE AND NEW LECTURE CONTENT

Abstract

During lectures, students are inundated with vast amounts of information and good academic listening skills are vital for them to make sense of the information. When students are not inducted into the new lecture content, the gap between their existing background knowledge and the new content may affect their comprehension of the lecture. This study examined the use of lecture introductions for bridging students’ background knowledge with new lecture content. The specific aspects studied were the organisational structure of the lecture introduction, and the use of questions and pronouns to engage students’ thinking on the content of the lecture. A case study was conducted at a Malaysian university, involving lecturers from seven faculties. Forty-seven lecture introductions conducted in English were audio-taped and transcribed. Analysis of the organisational structure of lecture introductions based on Schuck (1970) and Davies (1981) revealed that activating students’ prior knowledge was the main component of the lecture introduction, but lecturers tended to state aims and objective of the lecture; point out importance of mastering the knowledge; and make announcements and give instructions before proceeding to the body of the lecture. To engage students in a communicative discussion, the lecturers were found to use the second-person pronoun “we” more frequently than “I” and “you” to include students in the intellectual discourse. Display questions were also extensively used but they were not effective in generating lecturer-student interaction on the subject matter due to the students’ passive response. The findings suggested that lecturers asked questions on the students’ previous knowledge to prepare them for the lecture proper.
Keywords: background knowledge, lecture introduction, pronouns