Intercultural postgraduate supervision meetings: an exploratory discourse study

Abstract

Students studying in a second language medium may find face to face meetings daunting. Teachers of English for Academic Purposes, working to help international postgraduate students acculturate successfully to a particular English-speaking university department, have been hampered by a lack of information on the discourse practices of these meetings. This paper reports findings from an analysis of transcripts of meetings between two student/supervisor pairs in agricultural science. The supervisors were native English speakers and students were international postgraduates and second language speakers of English. The analysis suggests that these students did not take up turns at talk without very clear signals to do so, and did not act to repair misunderstandings that went beyond the surface propositional level. It is suggested that examples of authentic interaction such as these could usefully be included in language-based training programs to enhance the success of intercultural supervision and other types of transactions for students, supervisors and other interlocutors.