8.2.2　Pedagogical implications

The present study also has some pedagogical implications.

Firstly, the findings of the present study show that constructing identities and making identity modification and identity shift are essentially a pragmatic strategy to satisfy various communicative needs in the current context of academic advising interaction. Understanding the relationship between communicative needs and the identities constructed by advice-givers in their academic advising interaction and mechanisms of making identity modification and identity shift can help advice-givers perform advising acts more effectively in other types of institutional interactions.

Secondly, the findings also show that constructing identities in academic advising sequences, which can be used as a pragmatic strategy, can also satisfy some secondary communicative needs, which are mainly related to the interpersonal relation between two parties. To promote the interpersonal relation is helpful to the development of harmonious communication and finally to the performance of advising acts. It therefore has some implications for creating and maintaining a harmonious communicative environment in academic interaction through constructing certain identities and making identity modification or identity shift. These may go to other types of institutional interactions.

Thirdly, the present study has uncovered some intrinsic characteristics of spoken academic interaction in a Chinese context by examining the factors affecting the expert advice-givers’ identity construction in academic advising interaction, such as the asymmetry of power relation, the salience of Chinese cultural norms, the participants’ default identities and deviational identities.The present study can therefore enhance the understanding of spoken academic interaction in the Chinese context.

Fourthly, although spoken and written genres are different in many ways,the ways of giving advice in spoken academic interaction may have some implications for advice-giving in written discourse. For example, the ways of giving advice in this study may help teachers make suggestions strategically when they give their students feedback about their essays.

Finally, the present study promotes the understanding of the dissertation proposal presentation meetings that happen in an educational setting and are closely related to learning (Wenger, 1998). The PhD students in this community of practice are also learning to construct appropriate identities because they may happen to be expected as experts in the similar academic events in the future. This means that the identity construction of the members of the committee in PhD dissertation proposal presentation meetings will influence the PhD students’ identity construction through this type of learning process.Thus, academic events such as dissertation proposal presentation meeting and dissertation defence are necessary part of MA and PhD education.