November 2006 Volume 2
Article 3.
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Article Title
Corpora Applications to Economics Presentations: A Case Study

Author
Renata Suzuki
Department of Economics, Sophia University, Japan

Bio Data
Renata Suzuki currently works at Sophia University teaching Economics English. She has extensive experience working with all levels and ages during her twenty-one years in Japan as an EFL teacher/lecturer. She has designed courses combining environmental awareness with English education, and published a free book of ecosongs for kids available at http://www.onegreenleaf.net. She is interested in peace education, learner autonomy, environmental EFL curriculum design, and internet tools in the classroom (CALL), including particularly blogs for classroom observation and professional development. Visit and comment at her blog http://grankageva.blogspot.com/. She can be contacted at renate@zaa.att.ne.jp

Abstract
The field of corpus studies with its exploration of language in use has revolutionized our understanding of language and how it works. However, changes in attitudes to language teaching are only slowly coming about, aided by recent textbooks which incorporate authentic texts and findings based on ‘real’ language. Particularly in the world of ESP, where student needs strongly dictate course curriculum, adequate textbooks may not always be available. The sphere of Economics presentations is such an example.

This paper offers a case study of how the teacher can usefully implement a corpus study to tailor presentation curriculum and provide information which facilitates student learning at their zones of proximal development. The study examines presentation relevance objectives according to a framework of strategies (Sperber &Wilson, 1986,1995; Dor, 2003). It then considers how to choose the most relevant corpus to the presentation mode. By examining two kinds of corpus data, frequency and collocation, the paper shows how the teacher can obtain results directly related to student language challenges and help students meet relevance objectives. The study suggests cognitive and affective benefits to students including informed choice of language and reduced fear of error. The paper finally highlights three areas of further research: the pragmatic function of ‘ostension’ (Sperber & Wilson) in presentations, the relevance of the diachronic nature of corpora to the classroom, and pedagogical issues concerning which type of corpus data may be most profitable and accessible presented directly to students or in a teacher-led condensed form.

1. Introduction
This paper will report on how L2 learners in Economics presentations often misuse similar noun phrases, ‘present/current’ with ‘state/ state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’ in their presentations. I will show certain conventions governing the use of these phrases and how a Bank of English study can assist students in learning to make distinctions between these similar but different phrases. Following an action research procedure, frequency and grammatical patterning data are used to explore three areas of concern in respective sections: 1) Can they be used synonymously as the dictionary definition and native speaker intuition suggests? 2) Which terms are more frequent and suited to the discourse of an Economics Presentation? 3) Are there differences in semantic prosody and grammatical patterns of use? Results suggest how students can linguistically highlight the relevance of their topic when introducing up-to-date information.

1.1 Subjects and Context
I teach two ninety minute, thirteen-week courses of English for Economics Majors (each class has approximately forty third-year higher-intermediate students, age 21) at a Faculty of Economics in a private Japanese university. Most of these majors have studied English for eight years and wish to focus on Economics rather than English language per se. For motivation purposes, English tasks therefore require a clear, empowering, career-related purpose beyond acquisition of English grammar or vague standards of fluency. As a result, the course addresses English presentation, Powerpoint (ppt) and research skills in Financial and Environmental Economics.

Students prepare four team presentations: Presentation One (Financial Economics) introduces basic, linear presentation structure with introductory and closing phrases and responses to queries. Presentation Two (Financial Economics) focuses on justifying arguments with visuals and sources, using graphs, charts and surveys. Presentation Three (Environmental Economics) highlights making presentation topics relevant, quoting up-to-date information and articles, and using rhetorical questions and repetition to make presentations interactive. The last Presentation reviews all skills, with a final emphasis on humor and persuasion.

1.2 Misuse of similar noun phrases, ‘present/current’ with ‘state/ state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’
In their third presentation, students introduce a current focus in topics expressly. Students are also advised to include exact data, dates and sources to highlight the up-to-date nature of topics. Therefore, in this study I focus on incipient linguistic use of terms: ‘present/current’ and ‘state/ state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’. For instance, in a prior Presentation Two ppt on ‘Migrant Labor’, a student slide heading is ‘Example 1’. The ppt slide (Fig. 1) above shows how in their third presentation, ‘Chinese Environment’, students have begun to highlight relevance using ‘present’ and ‘condition’. (The slide alludes to a November 13th 2005 chemical plant explosion that killed 5 people and polluted the Songhua River, China, with 100tons of benzene).
Further student attempts to highlight relevance include:

• Team A: ‘Money flows to foreign countries without rotating in the United States. However, munition industry’s situation is different….’(in a presentation on the economic benefits of war). 
• Team B: ‘This article is written about the current situation of India’, (in a presentation on poverty).
• Team C: ‘Circumstances of North Korea’ -ppt bullet (in a presentation on the economic situation in North Korea).
• Team D: ‘At present, infection of bird flu from a bird to a person is not confirmed.’ (in a presentation on the economic effects of bird flu).

While these headings are not outright erroneous, native-speaker intuition suggests they could be improved: students seem unaware of certain conventions governing the use of these phrases which could facilitate more acceptable choices. The following corpus study clarifies how student presentations and ppts could be improved linguistically and why.

1.3 Review of the literature and methodology
The procedure for this study is an action research mode in which theory and method directs each step according to the findings. Two issues are discussed in this section: 1) how students make complex and acceptable language use approximating target discourse; 2) the shortcomings of dictionary and teacher intuition as support tools when students choose between similar noun phrases.

• Approximating presentation register

First, how can students express the concept of up-to-date information, the here and now (relevance) appropriately in the discourse of presentations?
According to Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995), ‘relevance’ is a property ‘which makes information worth processing for a human being’ (p.46). In their pragmatic cost-benefit model, the most relevant information offers new, modifying and improving knowledge of the world at minimal processing cost. Applying this theory to newspaper headlines, Dor (2003:716) has shown how headlines optimize the relevance of their stories for the reader with three main strategies. The first, ‘requiring the minimal amount of processing effort’ (p.716), entails simplifying language, shortening text or working with known concepts. The second, ‘carrying the maximal amount of contextual effect’ (p.716) concerns making sure the information is new and interesting. The third, ‘making sure the readers construct the right context for interpretation’ (p.716) involves helping the reader position and evaluate the information in relation to prior knowledge. Dor claims that headlines aim to meet a maximum number of these strategies.

Drawing on Sperber and Wilson’s (1986, 1995) theory of relevance and Dor’s application may be useful when considering presentation discourse and powerpoint items. While headlines have a very particular ‘selection device’ (Dor 2003:719) function in newspapers, it could be argued that the pragmatic function of the presentation discourse linguistic items under consideration here are what Sperber and Wilson term ‘ostension’, that is ‘making manifest an intention to make something manifest’ (p.49). In other words, they are a linguistic pointing device functioning overtly to signal to the audience the novelty value of the information. Sperber and Wilson also point out that ‘ostension comes with a tacit guarantee of relevance’ (p.49)  It could be said that the presentation discourse and powerpoint bullets under consideration here serve to make more ostensibly manifest the relevance benefits from listening to the presentation. Nevertheless, Dor’s three relevance strategies for newspaper headlines are a useful starting point for analyzing what the students are attempting to achieve and how the teacher can use corpus analysis to help them.
 
Let us consider meeting the first and second strategies, minimizing processing effort and maximizing the new information. If we consult the Genius Japanese English dictionary (Konishi, T. & Minamide, K. 2003-4), we see that • genzai (現在) is translated from Japanese as ‘now’ and ‘at present’. With such simple adverbials (now/at present/currently/ at this time/ at the present time and so on) and basic formulaic rhetorical question such as ‘What is happening in ‘Country/Industry Name’ ADVERBIAL?’ one might argue that the students’ relevance goal of processing ease and highlighting novelty value is easily reached. At this level, the teacher can help students choose appropriate phrases studying corpus data results from Kennedy’s (1998: 15) Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus research. Students could discuss frequencies of usage and the varying popularity of collocation ‘at this time’; 28 tokens, ‘at the present time’; 20 tokens, ‘at this moment’; 8 tokens and ‘at the present moment’; 1 token (Kennedy 1998:15).

However these Japanese Majors are beginning to make complex choices linking the concept of ‘now’ to ‘situation’. As a teacher I prioritize helping students to achieve at the level of language they aim to use, in other words to support ‘functions that will mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state’ (Vygotsky, 1978:86). Here, student goals are acceptable presentation discourse highlighting relevance. Is complex nominalization required? Are students making their discourse less relevant by ignoring Dor’s (2003) first strategy and increasing processing load?

Our following discussion suggests students are implementing a fourth strategy: strengthening confidence in the speaker. Revisiting Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995), the authors suggest that the intention of a communicator (in this case, the student presentation team) is to modify ‘the cognitive environment of the audience’ (p.58) . They describe a paradigm of ‘strength’ of (audience) perception and assumptions, which depend on how they are acquired, either first-hand, or through a second party: ‘Similarly, the initial strength of an assumption may depend on the way it is acquired…assumptions based on acceptance of somebody’s word have a strength commensurate with one’s confidence in the speaker…’(p.77). I would argue that by choosing to convey information in a more suitable academic and presentation style register, students are linguistically signaling their trustworthiness, increasing audience confidence in the speaker and strengthening the relevance of their work.

Student’s choice of nominal phrase allows for a conceptual concentration of information linking ‘current/present’ with ‘situation/circumstances/ condition/ state’. According to Halliday & Martin (1993 in Hunston 2002:162), more dense, abstract thinking involves nominalization to cope with complexity. The phrase is flexible, functioning both in adverbial position with a preposition such as ‘in’, and also as nominal group in subject/object position of a sentence. Moreover, the mixed written/spoken mode of Economics ppt presentation approximates a more formal style of English than casual conversation, and consequently lexical density featuring nominalization will be higher. In this way, by choosing a linguistic complexity more suited to the academic presentation register, students are signaling the academic level of their information, creating audience confidence and trust, and thus strengthening presentation relevance. Building confidence in the speaker by appropriate linguistic devices (collocational use and register sensitivity) could therefore be considered a fourth relevance strategy.

Moreover, although students may be said to be abandoning Dor’s first relevance strategy of cognitive processing ease, students are maintaining the second strategy, ostensibly signaling the temporal ‘new’ . With a meaning-sensitive choice of target lexis, students are also implementing the third strategy, ‘making sure the readers construct the right context for interpretation’ (Dor, 2003:716). The following corpus study reveals a somewhat varied semantic prosody of target phrases, an awareness of which can help students signal particular interpretations to the listener. As such, this section concludes that encouraging acceptable use of target phrases ‘the+current/present+ state/state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’ to highlight topics matches both student learning curves and maximizes discourse relevance by use of three identified strategies.

1.3.2 Shortcomings of Dictionary and Native Speaker Intuition
                        This brings us to the second issue: how can students make a differentiated choice between seemingly equal phrases to optimize relevance by assisting the audience in constructing the right context for interpretation? The dictionary seems to indicate that these words are synonymous, equivalent and can be used interchangeably. If we again consult the Genius (Konishi, T. & Minamide, K., 2003-4), we see

• ‘state’, ‘condition’ and ‘situation’ as translation of joutai (状態)
• ‘circumstances’, ‘condition’ and ‘situation’ for jijou (事情).

Furthermore, in the Advanced Learner’s (Hornby, A.S. & Wehmeier, S., 2000) in my Casio XD-LP9300 electronic dictionary (electronic dictionaries are widely favored by Japanese students), all definitions contain one or other of the terms (highlighted in red below) in a quasi round robin:

con•di•tion /kndIn/ noun, verb
noun
STATE OF STH
1 [U, sing.] the state that sth is in: to be in bad / good / excellent condition

state /steIt/ noun, adj., verb
noun
CONDITION OF SB / STH
1 [C] the mental, emotional or physical condition that a person or thing is in: … anxieties about the state of the country’s economy… note at condition

cir•cum•stance /skmstns; stns; stns; NAmE srkmstns/ noun
1 [C, usually pl.] the conditions and facts that are connected with and affect a situation, an event or an action: …changing social and political circumstances… note at situation

situ•ation /sItueIn/ noun
1 all the circumstances and things that are happening at a particular time and in a particular place:…the present economic / financial / political, etc. situation

If, as Sinclair (2004:171) argues, ‘a large proportion of the word occurrence is the result of co-selection…’ (see also Sinclair’s (1991) ‘idiom principle’), there may be evidence in corpus patterns that these words linked with ‘current’ or ‘present’ cannot be used interchangeably and have different spectrums of use and meaning. Indeed, prior lexicographic studies by Biber, Conrad & Reppen (1998;1994) on differences between ‘little’ and ‘small’, ‘certain’ and ‘sure’, and by Kennedy (1991) on ‘between’ and ‘through’, suggest that what the dictionary defines as near-synonyms do tend to have different patterns of use and shades of meaning.

How can the teacher support a differentiated choice and help students manipulate the specific patterns of meaning? A native speaker might intuitively suggest the Fig. 1 heading ‘the present condition’ be amended to ‘the current situation ’. However, native speaker choices between these words are based on accumulated exposure. Most intuition does not give access to reasons for making decisions, and has no clear list of possible patterns to guide a third party (Sinclair, 1997). Even as a highly educated native speaker, I would not have been able to explain the data nuances this research reveals. Odlin (1994: 286-7) recommends: ‘More advanced learners can and should receive detailed information about acceptability…To a large extent, the problem requires knowing the goals of the student writers.’　Here, the goals have been clarified: to help students make use of linguistic ostension to maximize the relevance of presentations in a way which will not only signal novelty, but also indicate the trustworthiness of the speaker when constructing particular contexts for interpretation. This paper suggests a corpus study may bridge the gap between dictionary data, which does not offer advice tailored specifically to highlighting relevance in Economics presentations.

2. Corpus study of the Bank of English sub-corpora
The following section examines 1) the suitability of the corpus (and in particular three sub-corpora) to the presentation query 2) the distribution of ‘current/present’ with ‘state/ state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’ across the Bank of English sub-corpora and 2) frequencies in selected BBC, NPR and Economist (Econ) sub-corpora. It determines which target phrases may be most acceptable to help students manifest relevance in presentation discourse.

2.1 Determining a suitable corpus
To determine target phrases best suited to presentation discourse, I decided to investigate corpus-based frequencies. Hunston & Laviosa (2000:85) suggest that ‘the individual teacher …should use the largest corpus practicably available.’ As a University of Birmingham MA student, I conveniently have telnet access to the 450 million word Bank of English. This corpus is designed as a resource for dictionary and reference book writers (Hunston, 2002), which purpose matches the paradigm of this lexico-grammatical study. However, Stubbs (2002:67) warns against bias errors due to corpus composition, which he terms ‘raw first-order data’. Indeed, Biber, Conrad and Reppen (1994)’s corpus-based dimensional model of linguistic register variation of 10 spoken and written registers suggests specific linguistic and lexical parameters to register.  As Hunston (2002: 154) observes, ‘within a particular register, or within a particular language function, a paradigm may come into or out of existence in a way that is not true for the language as a whole.’

I therefore focus my study on concordance lines and frequencies from sub-corpora closest matching parameters of Economic presentations: formal reporting-style spoken discourse, coupled with Economic content. Unfortunately there are no specialized presentation corpora available to consult. Nevertheless, since Economics Presentations are informational rather than involved, and abstract rather than non-abstract, they could be situated between Broadcasts and Scientific prose in Biber, Conrad and Reppen’s (1994:182) model. 3 sub-corpora were therefore selected: 1) BBC sub-corpus of 3 million words with 23 texts from 1990-91 with daily transcripts from broadcasts of the BBC World Service, London, including news, current affairs and general interest programs; 2) NPR sub-corpus of 3 million words with 103 texts from 1990-93 with daily transcripts from broadcasts of National Public Radio, Washington, USA, including news, current affairs and general interest programs; 3) The Economist sub-corpus, with written texts from the specialized Economist magazine.

2.2 Distribution of ‘the +current/present +state/ state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’ in Bank of English sub-corpora
An analysis of occurrence and frequency of target phrases was performed to confirm the suitability of the chosen corpora. Appendix 1 offers a data-table showing distribution of target lexical phrases across Bank of English sub-corpora. The top 3 heaviest-user sub-corpora are listed with number of raw occurrence and frequency per million words. The top three user sub-corpora reveal that target phrases are indeed representative of and most frequently used in broadcasting. Usage in the BBC sub-corpus of ‘the current/present state’, ‘the current/present state of affairs’, ‘the current/present circumstances’ and ‘ the current/present situation’ ranks consistently top or appear in second place.

Moreover, whereas the NPR sub-corpus never enters the top three for frequency of ‘present’ with ‘state’ etc., it has a consistent top three ranking entry for ‘the current state of affairs’, ‘the current circumstances’, ‘the current condition’ and ‘the current situation’. There is evidence that contrary to British broadcasting where either choice is acceptable, for US broadcasting and consequently a US audience, ‘current’ is a preferable adjectival choice over ‘present’ with ‘state/state of affairs/ circumstances/condition’ to highlight relevance. Students can therefore be advised to choose ‘current’ over ‘present’ to meet discourse expectations for audiences both sides of the Atlantic.

Incidentally, the only target lexical combination with which the Economist sub-corpus enters the top three heavy users in the Bank of English is ‘the present state of affairs’. Instances of ‘the present state of affairs’ could thus be further examined for possible specific meanings or semantic prosodies.

3. Observations of Frequency data results
This section first examines issues arising from frequency data of BBC, NPR and Econ. sub-corpora. Collocation picture (sorted by t-score and MI score) and concordance lines then provide further insight into frequency data results.

3.1 Target phrase frequency usage in 3 sub-corpora

Table 1 below shows frequencies per million words of target phrases in the three sub-corpora. (For comparison purposes frequency per million words is provided, rather than raw number of occurrences, since corpora sizes are different.)

As can easily be seen from this data reformatted in graph format
(Fig. 2; p.15), not all combinations are equally popular. It follows that the most authentic phrases to recommend to students are those which peak for all three sub-corpora. In other words, students can safely choose ‘the current state’ and ‘the current situation’ with a higher probability of strengthening relevance by sounding acceptable.

A further point of interest is that where British corpora show zero usage of ‘the current condition’, this phrase seems popular in NPR. Corpus-based studies by Tottie (1991b in Kennedy 1998: 193) have highlighted pragmatic differences in US and UK usage of backchannel feedback, and Kennedy (1998:193) mentions corpus evidence for British and American English linguistic differences. The graph below (Fig.2) offers students a visual representation of such geographical lexical difference. In this case Bank of English evidence suggests the (British) BBC and The Economist avoid ‘the current condition’, since there is no occurrence in these sub-corpora.

Fig. 2: Frequencies/million words of target phrases in 3 subcorpora

Actual concordance lines of ‘the current condition’ in the NPR sub-corpus are examined in section 3.2.4 and suggest that there are indeed US culture-specific Economics-related meanings or usages involved. Examining such frequency data may lead students to deeper awareness of cultural linguistic nuance, and how to exploit culture-specific linguistic patterns for relevance purposes. Coupled with frequency data, such awareness offers students a platform to choose which type of language they aim to use and study.

In summary, examining in sub-corpora frequency data per million words of ‘the+current +state’, ‘the+present+state’, ‘the+current+state+of+affairs’, ‘the+present+state+of+affairs’, ‘the+present+circumstances’, ‘the+current+condition’, ‘the+present+condition’, ‘the+current+situation’ and ‘the+present+situation’ has given evidence that 1) all phrases are possible as the dictionary definition suggests, 2) all phrases are likely in a broadcasting or Economics context and therefore suitable to the presentation medium, 3) not all are equally often used, suggesting a possible safety choice where three sub-corpora peak, 4) there are geographical nuances, noticeably differences in British and US preference for the word ‘current’ and phrase ‘the current condition’, 5) As we have argued in the previous section 1, particular semantic meanings help ‘making sure the readers construct the right context for interpretation’ (Dor, 2003:716) and thus function as relevance optimizers. Clearly further examination of detailed and sorted corpus examples is necessary to explore finer parameters of use and possible shades of meanings. This fifth issue will be addressed in the following section.

3.2 Observation of collocation picture and concordance data
This section analyzes collocation ‘pictures’ to offer students teacher-created starter phrases, and identifies authentic question patterns in concordance lines. It notes patterns, such as ‘the current situation in + Country Name’, ‘the current state of + Topic’, and diagnoses the pragmatic hedging function of ‘in the current circumstances’. A specific US economic use of ‘the current condition’ is detected. On the basis of each finding, relevance-oriented suggestions for amendments to student powerpoint phrases are made.

3.2.1 Collocation picture data for ‘the+current/present+situation’
At the outset, analysis of a whole Bank of English corpus collocate picture providing t-score and Mutual Information (MI) score may reveal nuances of ‘semantic prosody’ (Stubbs, 1996) and usage. MI scores provide information on ‘fixed’ co-occurrences of lexical behavior and t-scores confirm the reliability of the collocation (Hunston, 2002:71). T-scores of 2 or higher and MI scores of 3 or higher can be taken to be significant (Hunston, 2002; Potter, 1999). Significant data scores will be offered with t-score followed by MI score rounded to the second decimal: (t; MI) thus ‘assessment’ (1.99; 8.03).

Based on frequency information, I begin by looking at the strongest data peak, ‘the+current+SITUATION’. The phrase (see Appendix 2) collocates strongly with neutral conceptual words such as ‘assessment’ (1.99; 8.03), ‘analysis’(1.72; 6.75), ‘view’ (1.68; 5.05), ‘described’ (1.94; 6.2), ‘assess’ (1.72; 8.67), and with less significant scores ‘clarify’, ‘reviewed’, identify’ and ‘describe’. In first column to the left, ‘of’ (6.5; 2.23) has the strongest t-score, and, in first column to the right, ‘in’ (8.17; 3.2), followed in second place by country names such as ‘the (gulf)’ (2.43; 7.29), ‘tibet’, ‘south (africa)’, ‘rwanda’, ‘yugoslavia’, and iraq’. Furthermore, in sixth column to the right, ‘environmental’, ‘financial’, ‘economic’, ‘political’ and ‘infrastructure’ suggest parameters related to the Economics focus of my students.

Teacher-contrived sample starters such as:

• ‘Our analysis/assessment/description of the current situation in China (from an environmental economic perspective) reveals/identifies/clarifies that…’

could reasonably be offered to students. Moreover, ‘the current situation’ seems to be used frequently at the head of a sentence and paragraph as first-left column information <p> (2.61; 1.52) suggests, or in sentence and paragraph final position, first right column <p> (4.24; 2.33). This indicates it may be ideal for a powerpoint header or item.

In contrast, analytical collocates are not found with ‘the+present+SITUATION’, which noticeably features personal evaluative words such as ‘factor’ (1.99; 7.96), ‘fears’ (1.99; 3.12), ‘dangers’ (1.72; 9.05), ‘responsibility’ (1.72; 6.8) in second column to the left, and in other left columns ‘gloomy’, ‘worrying’, ‘feeling’ and ‘difficult’. These suggest a bias toward casual conversation, which is further strengthened by patterns of numerous personal pronouns and direct address in columns to the right: four instances of ‘we’, with first right strongest at (2.61; 2.94), ‘you’, ‘our’, ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘our’, ‘own’ (1.64; 3.74), ‘Tim’, and verbs of making suggestions such as ‘need’ (1.92; 4.67), ‘let’, and ‘seem’ (1.7; 5.85). The evidence suggests that this phrase might be more authentically used in Economics discussions, rather than in a more formal presentation.

However, Hunston and Laviosa (2000:57) signal caution when interpreting ‘picture’ data since: ‘(c)ollocation lists and ‘picture(s)’ work on individual word forms, and because of this they can make fixed phrases seem more important than they are.’ They suggest that apparently important phrases may in fact not ‘dominate the phraseology’. In light of these warnings, examining usage patterns of the four target words in actual concordance lines with ‘current’ and ‘present’ seemed indispensable. The following section thus examines concordance lines from the three target sub-corpora to confirm or disconfirm the collocation ‘picture’ findings.

3.2.2. Concordance lines: ‘the+current/present+ situation’
A search for ‘the+current+situation’ in target sub-corpora delivers 135 concordance lines. Further sorting 2 left of the node CURRENT shows the expected strong adverbial pattern of use with ‘in’ (22 examples out of 135, or 16.3%),

• ‘in the current situation +Description/ Recommendation/Projection’.

Example: s main discretionary powers. In the current situation the President is being  
Moreover there is a noticeable pattern (28 examples or 20.7%) of

• ‘Person/organization +reported speech (say/argue/stress/call/refer to/compare to/describe as) +[that (optional)] +the current situation +[in + country name (optional)]+ Evaluation/Comparison

Example: a joint statement saying that the current situation in Kosovo raises a grave

• (For further examples see Appendix 3)

The main prosody of the word seems both acute and problematic, with evaluative adjectives such as ‘sensitive’, ‘precarious’, ‘illegal’ and ‘unacceptable’. However, a similar pattern of reported speech is evident with ‘the+ present+ situation’, where of 106 examples 8.5% or nine examples have similar prosody (adjectives ‘critical’, ‘unstable’, ‘calm’, ‘untenable’) and pattern,

• ‘Person/organization+ reported speech (say/contrast/describe as) + the present situation + [in+ country name (15examples or 14%)] +Evaluation/Comparison.

Since ‘the present situation’ offers more examples of direct speech, and of two direct questions,

• ‘Can you just explain to me what the present situation is in Albania?’
• ‘How serious is the present situation?’,

these can also be usefully employed in presentations (although ‘just’ and ‘to me’  might be edited to make it less colloquial). Clearly earlier ‘picture’ distinctions of formal presentation or casual discussion are fuzzy and not necessarily binding, as noted by Hunston and Laviosa (2000:57). It would seem that in the target sub-corpora ‘the current situation’ and ‘the present situation’ have a flexible, wide and overlapping spectrum of usage. In other words both items can safely and correctly be employed in suggested patterns above with country name and as a presentation heading to signal immediacy and concern. Nevertheless, since frequency data points to ‘current’ in this register, students can be guided to this preference. With Dor’s (2003) strategy of optimizing relevance coupled with these collected data, the teacher can offer clear justification for a rewritten bullet to presentation team C to read: ‘(The) Current Situation in North Korea’.

3.2.3. Concordance lines: ‘the+current/present+ state’
Comparison analysis of the second frequency peak in the data, ‘the current/present state’ reveals differences to ‘the current/present situation’. There are a total of 67 concordance lines for ‘the+current+state’ in the three sub-corpora (after deletion of 7 items referring to government as state), and 44 examples of ‘the +present+ state’ (See Appendix 4). Contrary to ‘situation’, ‘state’ is more often followed by ‘of’ plus a topic rather than a country. Twelve concordance lines (19.4%) refer explicitly to ‘the current state of the economy’, and 3 (6.8%) to ‘the present state of the economy’. Further neutral topics shared by both are ‘of the world/of foreign policy/of debt/of our trade balance/of AIDS research’. Topics signaling concern are also in evidence: ‘of labour unrest/ of violence/ of emergency/ of tension’. In this way, ‘state’ seems to have more neutral parameters than ‘situation’, although negative prosody is also in evidence. On balance ‘situation’ seems more related to countries in crisis, and ‘state’ to introduce a particular topic area, in particular the economic topics under concern in this paper. On the basis of this corpus evidence, the teacher can validate a rewrite to team B to read: ‘This article assesses the current state of poverty in India’ (since their presentation focus is poverty, rather than the country). Furthermore for team D the bullet would read: ‘The current state of bird-flu research has not confirmed infection from bird to human.’

3.2.4 Concordance lines: ‘the+current/present+ condition’
Moving to the next item, ‘the+ current/present+ condition’, further insights are gained. All concordance lines from the NPR corpus show a tendency for ‘the current/present condition’ to be used in US broadcasting as a synonym for ‘the current/present state’ used specifically in an economic context: five of six examples (83.3%) have clear economic parameters, as cited below:

   do not consider the current condition of the economy when buying or    
When you consider the current condition of Eritrea's resources, its rain-
of consumers by simply the current condition of the economy. You have to put 
many Americans believe the present condition of the economy is bad, bad all   
  is a temptation in the present condition to sell technology, and there is

Presentation team A can thus rewrite their ppt text concerning US trade as: ‘However, the current condition of the munitions industry is different.’ Nevertheless, since the number of examples from the NPR corpus is limited, this suggestion can be only tentative.

3.2.5 Concordance lines: ‘the+current/present+ circumstances’
In BBC, NPR and Econ. sub-corpora, 8 out of 12 or 66% of concordance lines for ‘the+current+circumstances’ feature adverbial use following ‘in’ or ‘under’. The remainder follow ‘due to’, ‘in light of’ and ‘because of’. Equally for ‘the+present+circumstances’, 28 out of 32 examples follow ‘in’, ‘under’ or ‘given’. This matches patterns from the complete corpus, where ‘in’(4.63; 4.85), ‘under’ (3.15; 8.58) collocate with ‘the current circumstances’, and ‘in’ (8.82; 5.25), ‘under’ (4.78; 8.35) with ‘the present circumstances’. These phrases seem more limited in grammatical use than ‘the present/current situation/state/ state of affairs/condition’, being preferably used in adverbial position with a preposition.

Notably a meaning pattern emerges suggesting the phrases may be specifically used as a caveat, justification or excuse for not taking action, and signal unwillingness or inability to change. This pragmatic function as a hedge to justify non-action is illustrated in selected concordance lines below:

but is unlikely in the current circumstances. It would go against the policy
that his departure in the current circumstances would mean chaos and more
of the blockage in the present circumstances would be the crippling of
I don't think that in the present circumstances it would be possible to
 what I'm afraid, in the present circumstances, the--the investment will be
our population. Under the current circumstances, that time I don't think is
country which under the present circumstances they cannot send any

The predominantly adverbial usage may be the reason why ‘in the current/present circumstances’ is less frequent than ‘state’ or ‘situation’, which as I noted earlier, have wider and more flexible prosodies.　This restricted adverbial usage and pragmatic hedging function are worth highlighting for students. With this knowledge they may choose to achieve two relevance strategies: first, to achieve more natural ‘pattern flow’, strengthening audience confidence in the speaker, and second, exploiting semantic meaning to help the audience to construct the right context (Dor’s third strategy).

3.2.6 Concordance lines: ‘the+current/present+ state+ of+ affairs’
  The final item, ‘state of affairs’ (a strong collocate of ‘state’), is particularly popular with ‘The Economist’, showing third most frequent use compared to other sub-corpora (Appendix 1). The sub-corpora concordance lines provide a further authentic question format useful for presentation rhetoric:

• ‘How did the present state of affairs come about?’

However, the sub-corpora examples show similar parameters in negative semantic prosody to ‘situation’ or ‘state’, minus the specific country or topic area. If the presenter’s aim is to project a neutral and objective academic stance, this prosody could be regarded as less useful for Economics students.

This section studied frequency phenomena using collocation ‘pictures’ and concordance lines from the bbc, npr and econ sub-corpora. Useful starter phrase and question patterns were noted, together with patterned shades of meaning for each phrase linked to spectrums of usage, such as ‘the current situation in + Country Name’, ‘the current state of + Topic’, or the pragmatic hedging function of ‘in the current circumstances’. A specific Economic use of ‘the current condition’ was noted for the US sub-corpus. On the basis of these findings, suggestions for how to amend student powerpoint phrases were made.
        
4. Conclusions
This paper has reported on how L2 learners could highlight presentation topic relevance using similar but different phrases ‘present/current’ with ‘state/ state of affairs/ circumstances/ condition/ situation’. Having described the pragmatic function of such language as ‘ostension’ (Sperber & Wilson, 1986, 1995), the study used Dor’s framework of relevance strategies to explain how the students can achieve relevance using specific phrases in their powerpoint presentations. A fourth relevance strategy, building audience confidence, is suggested. The study suggests that with clearer understanding of frequency, collocation and semantic prosody, students can maximize relevance goals. A Bank of English study showed that ‘the current situation in + country’ and ‘the current state of +topic’ are most suited to Economics presentation discourse. In particular students can learn to exploit differences in semantic prosody and meaning noted in the study (for example: ‘in the current circumstances’) to construct the right context for interpretation (Dor, 2003) . ‘Present’ and ‘current’ were found to be synonymous but used differently by British and Americans, suggesting students can mirror audience cultural expectations to build confidence in the speaker.

Areas which merit further research are the pragmatic function of ‘ostension’ in powerpoint presentations briefly outlined in this paper. Moreover linguistic cultural specifics concerning ‘current’ and ‘the current condition’ merit further research from a diachronic perspective. Are they gaining ground? Alternatively, from a pedagogical perspective it may be interesting to research which kind of corpus data students find most useful, frequency graphs, picture or concordance.

Knowing that lexical choice is about meeting communication goals (in this instance, highlighting relevance) and involves an awareness of frequency, form-meaning patterns and register may have consequential benefits of liberating Japanese students from examination trauma of right/wrong. Moreover providing students with teacher-mediated selected and concentrated exposure to real data may build a fast track to native speaker-level insight. Willis (2003), Johns (1991, 1994), Stevens (1991) and Barlow (1996) among others offer concrete advice on introducing corpus data in classrooms. I also have previous experience of successfully using concordance data and data-driven learning with these students (Suzuki, 2004). However, their interest focuses on content over linguistics and my course time is limited. In the current circumstances, I would favor integrating the above data results into a handout to become an item of lecturing prior to the 3rd presentation.

The author would like to acknowledge the editorial assistance of Dr. Karen Garcia, Massachusetts, USA.

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Appendix 1: Corpus frequencies for target phrases

Figures are number of raw occurrence and frequency per million words

Appendix 2:Bank of English Collocation Picture (accessed 07/02/2006)

• ‘the+ current+situation’

 this       brief      what       of         the        current    NODE       in         the        gulf       being      that       britain   
to         attempt    to         in                               NODE       is         not        country    among      has        is        
be         film       whatsoever that                             NODE       <p>        that       is         family     series     the       
is         not        assessment with                             NODE       and        are        royal      film       there      that      
are        be         leading    about                            NODE       where      which      are        east       some       have      
he         take       led        is                               NODE       we         we         tendencies country    are        environmen
p          frightenin light      on                               NODE       was        tibet      spokesman  what       an         leadership
approving  an         deal       to                               NODE       continues  said       africa     very       many       pressure  
habitat    m          him        <p>                              NODE       but        south      
"gulf". Tot freq:34187. Freq as coll:6. t-sc:2.4338. MI:7.2906.

• ‘the+ present+situation’

mr         the        factor     in         the        present    NODE       is         which      soviet     king       to         one       
what       to         fears      of                               NODE       in         that       they       union      no         serbia    
the        be         do         that                             NODE       where      the        what       you        of         of        
that       important  dangers    with                             NODE       we         not        as         seem       well       is        
are        not        reality    about                            NODE       <p>        need       if         it         we         british   
stern      any        responsibl for                              NODE       and        addition   way        cooke      opportunit good      
divorced   an         election   described                        NODE       would      is         we         stern      prime      don       
impossible adapting   view       to                               NODE       as         far        facto      is         difficult  we         
explain    rankings   believe    what                             NODE       there      can        albania   

"one". Tot freq:1212438. Freq as coll:5. t-sc:1.8081. MI:2.3856.

Appendix 3: BBC, NPR & Econ Sub-corpora:

• 20 selected lines from ‘the+ current+situation’ sorted two to the left of the node (25/03/2006)

the region this week. He says the current situation makes it more difficult 
        soundly assess, and take the current situation seriously. Mr Mubarak   
      magazine, L'Expresse, that the current situation in which others are     
 <p> Daws: How do you think that the current situation, and particularly the   
      peacekeepers. He said that the current situation, which has seen low-    
    Hopkins University says that the current situation in Kabul is a test of   
  of Moscow in 1812, adding that the current situation did not comport with the
the Cambodian issue, adding that the current situation was moving in a         
       They expressed fears that the current situation could lead to violent   
democratic nation. It added that the current situation demanded the speedy     
   a joint statement saying that the current situation in Kosovo raises a grave
      Reports say he argued that the current situation highlights Saudi Arabia'
   events showed once again that the current situation in the occupied         
   parliament, for example, that the current situation in his country is not   
   However, he has stressed that the current situation in the Gulf cannot be   
   told Mr Sobchak's office that the current situation was illegal.            
 Mr Taro Nakayama, has said that the current situation does not permit Japan to
Civil War analogy appropriate to the current situation because she feels both  
  t know what the alternative to the current situation is politically,         
   appeared to be a reference to the current situation in Somalia, the Pope    
     dos Santos was referring to the current situation as a state of undeclared

• 20 randomly selected lines from ‘the +present+situation’ sorted two to the left of the node (28/03/2006)

    between the 1979 debacle and the present situation are very striking. In
the BBC Eastern Service looks at the present situation in Punjab, and the
twelve say they are concerned by the present situation in Hungary and express
      been exceedingly cautious. The present situation seems to reverse the
       as he put it - `to dilute the present situation on the ground". `By no
 protect the environment and end the present situation under which most of the
   a packed news conference: `If the present situation continues, we will have
        today, and right now. In the present situation, nobody is safe, and no-
    the situation. Of course, in the present situation, each side is trying to
  not be supporting any party in the present situation. Mr Advani said he still
   Community also agreed that in the present situation, it would not recognise
  Serbs - an important factor in the present situation. In addition, the King
       in their consequences. In the present situation, Sarajevo, which
   this is something which is in the present situation more than ever before--
  emphasising the instability of the present situation in Europe, while others
  be implemented. The paradox of the present situation is that the farmers of
in Albania? STERN) Well, I think the present situation is one of a good deal of
   debate will be the trickiest. The present situation might seem to provide
   The Observer looks at the way the present situation built up. Colin Smith,
    and with imagination whether the present situation offers an opportunity as

Appendix 4: BBC, NPR & Econ Sub-corpora:

• 20 randomly selected lines from ‘the+ current+state’ (28/03/2006)

gainst this background, what is the current state of the so-called special
      The Afhan authorities say the current state of emergency which began
  War has continued to dominate the current state visit to Japan by the South
details have also emerged about the current state of security around the
merican business perspective on the current state of the Soviet economy? Maria
University of Michigan looks at the current state of Chinese foreign policy.
   under the Communists - since the current state of affairs was, if you like,
        areas today the toll in the current state of violence at Indore rose
     would be huge. A glance at the current state of China's economy might
         The US is unhappy with the current state of democratic freedoms and
BC Far Eastern Service looks at the current state of relations between Hanoi
  be $60 billion or more. Given the current state of the budget, the money
           seems to encapsulate the current state of AIDS research. The
       SSP), which will replace the current state earnings-related pension
   with blacks and whites about the current state of race relations. In his
 begins with this assessment of the current state of the economy. <p> Robert
  or bill that was worthless in the current state of affairs, 90 percent of
      that he was frightened by the current state of the economy and said mass
 failure to get re-elected that the current State Department team has lost a
heir prison funds. They believe the current state prison system doesn't

• 20 randomly selected lines from ‘the+ present+state’ (28/03/2006)

  expressed public concern about the present state of the international oil
  for the hostages and to assess the present state of the kidnappers
    by which they can understand the present state of the world. That too, says
   business of the nation during the present state of constitutional
  the task ahead: My attitude to the present state of affairs is very matter of
   there could be no question of the present state of affairs being allowed to
    Cambodians are unhappy about the present state of affairs in the country is
   the five leading officials of the present state are simultaneously leading
        Israel is clearly taking the present state of its relations with the
    Jacques Bekaert. BEKAERT: If the present state of war continued, the Khmer
 E.D.&F. Man Sugar) Ltd. How did the present state of affairs come about? DUR:
  rising prices, or to stay with the present state-run-industry and central-
    contains. This assessment of the present state and future prospects of the
         will begin by assessing the present state of affairs, pooling their
 are now having a go themselves. The present state government has an absurd 74
    s star-wars programme, where the present state of the art was developed. It
    director at the IMF), was on the present state of the art. <p> The
         that most discussion of the present state of the parties ends up by
 re going to examine what led to the present state of affairs, a report on the
 <p> Simon: Let me ask you about the present state of the Mideast peace talks,