MICASE:Supporting the topic

4. Supporting the topic

Towards the end of the presentation the main arguments are revisited and developed further. In this section you will learn more useful transitional devices and linking phrases for supporting your topic. In addition, there are corpus exercises on some selected expressions that learners often have difficulties with.

At this stage of the presentation you

deepen your thesis statement and revisit your main points
elaborate or argue your points further
begin to lead your audience towards the conclusion

Video clip 4: Supporting the topic

Now watch the fourth part of the presentation. Then read the instructions to the exercises below, watch the clip again and answer the questions.

NOTE: If needed, read the transcript of the presentation.

Exercise A: Transitional devices

1. Watch the presentation clip and pick out all the transitional devices the speaker uses. Write them down here together with the category they belong to. Take into consideration that some transitional devices may go into more than one category. 2. Go to the corpus and search the transitional devices you found in the clip. Give one example of usage for each.

If you need the table of transitional devices, click here.

Exercise B: Linking expressions

Watch the clip and listen for the language items that fit the categories below. Write the expressions into the appropriate box.

Summarising
Cause and effect
Making suggestions

Table of useful phrases

Exercise C: Investigating expressions and their functions

In this exercise you will observe some language items that learners can have difficulties with. All of the following examples are taken from the MICASE corpus. Use MICASE to browse for examples and choose the correct answer from the alternatives given. The search tips and feedback guide you along the way. You may obtain the best results by setting the native speaker status to that of American English and the speech event attributes to lectures large & small or student presentations.

Search tip: Look up all of the given expressions in the corpus and see which of them contain this sample sentence. This may sound like a lot of work but it actually isn't that hard to do!

Search tip: Look up moreover in the corpus and have a look at the sample phrase and its context in the transcript, then choose the correct alternative.

Search tip: Key despite in the word or phrase box and that in the context word or phrase box and set the proximity to 3 words to the right. See what you can find out!

Search tip: Type instead in the word or phrase box and then type each preposition one at a time in the context word or phrase box. Set the proximity to 1 word to the right.

Search tip: Type on one hand in the word or phrase box and on the other hand in the context word or phrase box and set the proximity to 10-11- words to the right.

Now you are ready to move on to the final stage, the Conclusion.

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