| The broad goal of this study is to represent the linguistic variation of textbooks and lectures, the primary input for student learning---and sometimes the sole input in the large introductory classes which characterize General Education at many state universities. Computer techniques are used to analyze a corpus of textbooks and lectures from first-year university classes in macroeconomics and biology. These spoken and written variants are compared to each other as well as to benchmark texts from other multi-dimensional studies in order to examine their patterns, relations, and functions.; A corpus consisting of 147,000 words was created from macroeconomics and biology lectures at a medium-large state university and from a set of nationally "best-selling" textbooks used in these same introductory survey courses. The corpus was analyzed using multi-dimensional methodology (Biber, 1988). The analysis consists of both empirical and qualitative phases. Quantitative analyses are undertaken on the linguistic features, their patterns of co-occurrence, and on the contextual elements of classrooms and textbooks. The contextual analysis is used to functionally interpret the statistical patterns of co-occurrence along five dimensions of textual variation, demonstrating patterns of difference and similarity with reference to text excerpts.; Results of the analysis suggest that academic discourse is far from monolithic. Pedagogic discourse in introductory classes varies by modality and discipline, but not always in the directions expected. In the present study the most abstract texts were biology lectures---more abstract than written genres of academic prose and more abstract than introductory textbooks. Academic lectures in both disciplines, monologues which carry a heavy informational load, were extremely interactive, more like conversation than academic prose. A third finding suggests that introductory survey textbooks differ from those used in upper division classes by being relatively less marked for information density, abstraction, and non-overt argumentation. In addition to the findings mentioned here, numerous other relationships among the texts exhibit complex patterns of variation related to a number of situational variables.; Pedagogical implications are discussed in relation to General Education courses, differing student populations, and the reading and listening demands which students encounter in large introductory classes in the university. |
