Adjusting a business lecture for an international audience: a case study

Abstract It is widely known that L2 audiences continue to experience comprehension difficulties when listening to content lectures in English, regardless of proficiency level. For this reason, NS lecturers should be aware of potential obstacles to comprehension and the need to make appropriate adjustments. In order to understand how such adjustments may be made, using a case study approach, this paper focuses on a business lecture given by a native speaker on two different occasions: As an L1 classroom lecture in the UK and as an L2 guest lecture in Italy. Speech rate, redundancies, interpersonal and disciplinary features and references to local culture were compared using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results showed that more adjustment had been made for the L2 audience in terms of speech rate, redundancies, interpersonal features, and references to local culture, while less had been made in the use of discipline-related lexis and metaphorical expressions. These insights into the characteristics of intercultural lecture discourse can find useful applications in the context of both lecturer training and EAP/ESP lecture comprehension instruction.

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