Особенности композиционной структуры текста англоязычной академической лекции

Abstract

The academic lecture is considered to be one of the basic genres of modern English-language academic discourse. The study of the compositional structure of the lecture text is extremely important, since a correctly arranged composition contributes to a better presentation of the topic by the lecturer and systemic learning of the material by the students. The purpose of this research was to identify the compositional features of the text of the English-language academic lecture. To achieve this goal, eight English-language lectures on the humanities were selected and carefully analysed. In the course of the analysis, phases of the lecture were singled out, the hierarchy of its elements was revealed, and the composition matrix of the lecture text was built. The main compositional elements of the lecture are as follows: the pre-text part (title complex), the text part (introduction, body, and conclusion) and the aftertext part (references and expression of gratitude for attention). As a result, the author proved that the lecture text has a matrix structure, whose elements are nonuniform, each being designed to perform its own specific function. The compositional-semantic structure of the lecture captures the movement from the “old” knowledge to the “new”. Further, English-language lectures demonstrate both strong and weak positions. This means that some elements in the text are more important than others. At the same time, the strong position does not have to be rigidly connected with the structure of the text. The following are regarded as strong positions: title of the lecture, names of its subsections, beginning and end of subsections, introductory and closing parts of the lecture, conclusions, semantic repetitions of key information, questions-and-answers part, and in-text references.