What are relational and discourse-marking lecture cues?

This is the fourth and final chapter about Listening for Lecture Cues. To complete this reader, read each chapter carefully and then unlock and complete our materials to check your understanding.   

– Introduce the concepts of relational and discourse-marking listening and lecture cues

– Divide these cues into seven subcategories

– Provide examples of each category to assist comprehension

Chapter 1: What are listening and lecture cues?

Chapter 2: What are organisational listening and lecture cues?

Chapter 3: What are informative listening and lecture cues?

Chapter 4: What are relational and discourse-marking lecture cues?

Before you begin reading...

This topic now has an interactive unit: Noticing Speaker Cues
  • video and audio texts
  • knowledge checks and quizzes
  • skills practices, tasks and assignments
visit this unit
E-learning

Chapter 4

The two final types of listening and lecture cues are called relational and discourse-marking cues, both of which are useful if you wish to improve your listening skills. Relational cues, such as in the examples below, are used to show relationships between concepts and ideas within a presentation:

Listening for Lecture Cues 4.1 Relational Cues
Listening for Lecture Cues 4.2 Relational Cues

A speaker will routinely signal and emphasise comparisons and contrasts in a lecture or highlight causal relationships to better explain and illustrate their ideas. Relational cues such as in the previous examples can therefore be divided into two types, the first of which are the cause and effect cues:

Listening for Lecture Cues 4.3 Cause and Effect Cues

The second type of relational cues are the compare and contrast cues which a speaker may use to discuss the similarities or differences of two concepts:

Listening for Lecture Cues 4.4 Compare and Contrast Cues

Finally are discourse-marking cues. In linguistics, a discourse marker simply refers to a word or phrase that helps to separate the elements of a conversation. In the context of academic presentations, this term is used to indicate when the speaker is adding something to their speech other than information or structure, such as emphasis, digression or restatement. These discourse-marking cues are therefore more practical in nature rather than informational.

But when would a speaker need to emphasise, digress from or restate their ideas? Simply put, emphasis cues, such as those provided below, may be used when the presenter wishes to highlight which of the ideas in their presentation are most significant, or when the listener should pay attention at a particular point:

Another way of providing a form of emphasis is to use restatement cues, which let the listener see the importance of a point by taking the time to repeat it. Additionally, such cues may be used to paraphrase an idea so that it’s overall meaning is better understood. Digression cues, on the other hand, are used when the speaker wishes to briefly move away from the main idea of a topic, perhaps to tell a short story or provide only loosely relevant examples.

Listening for Lecture Cues 4.6 Restatement Cues
Listening for Lecture Cues 4.7 Digression Cues

It’s worth learning all of these lecture cues if you wish to be a successful listener.

4 of 4 Chapters Completed

Downloadables

Once you’ve completed all four chapters about listening for lecture cues, you might also wish to download our beginner, intermediate and advanced worksheets to test your progress or print for your students. These professional PDF worksheets can be easily accessed for only a few Academic Marks.

Our listening for lecture cues academic reader (including all four chapters about this topic) can be accessed here at the click of a button.

Gain unlimited access to our listening for lecture cues beginner worksheet, with activities and answer keys designed to check a basic understanding of this reader’s chapters.

To check a confident understanding of this reader’s chapters, click on the button below to download our listening for lecture cues intermediate worksheet with activities and answer keys.

Our listening for lecture cues advanced worksheet with activities and answer keys has been created to check a sophisticated understanding of this reader’s chapters. 

To save yourself 5 Marks, click on the button below to gain unlimited access to all of our listening for lecture cues chapter and worksheets. The All-in-1 Pack includes every chapter on this topic, as well as our beginner, intermediate and advanced worksheets in one handy PDF.

Click on the button below to gain unlimited access to our listening for lecture cues teacher’s PowerPoint, which should include everything you’d need to successfully introduce this topic.

Academic Skills Centre
English Language Centre
Masterclass Centre

Collect Academic Marks

🎁 Free to join the community
  • 100 Marks for joining
  • 25 Marks for daily e-learning
  • 100-200 for feedback/testimonials
  • 100-500 for referring your colleages/friends
Click to Sign Up
AY 24-25