Corpus research on spoken academic discourse

Spoken academic discourse receives much less regulation compared to written discourse, which is often subject to guidelines. This chapter discusses the findings from spoken corpus research that are relevant for English for Academic Purposes and indicate how they can be used to build awareness of the demands of participation in academic contexts. It considers what CL has shown us about the specificities of spoken academic discourse, especially in comparison with written academic discourse. The chapter examines what corpora can tell us about formulaic language and its relationship to spoken academic fluency. Large-scale corpus research on academic discourse uncovers how language use differs between speaking and writing in academic life. Drawing on the relevance of word sequences, Simpson-Vlach and Ellis offer the Academic Formulas List, prioritizing the frequent recurrent sequences which occur more often in academic than non-academic discourse. The popularization of scientific knowledge has brought forth new academic genres such as the Three Minute Thesis.