“A Discourse Analysis of English Speeches Delivered by Rectors at The New Academic Year Ceremonies of Colleges and Universities”.

Abstract

This paper examined the discourse features of English speeches delivered by rectors at the new academic year ceremonies of colleges and universities in terms of layout, lexical features, syntactic features, cohesive devices and stylistic devices. In general, knowledge of discourse is of great importance in order to avoid misunderstanding as well as confusion. From the description as well as a full analysis on the features mentioned above, we will draw an overall picture of English speeches delivered by rectors at the new academic year ceremonies of colleges and universities. It is hoped that the results of the study will serve as an access to a profound understanding of this kind of speech in English. The study will help Vietnamese learners of English to write good speeches like this as well as improve their writing skill