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Learner corpora and second language acquisition
... In addition, they also contribute to the listener's perception of coherence (Tyler, Jefferies and Davies, 1988;Basturkmen, 2007). Moreover, they have great relationships with the learner's oral fluency (Hasselgren, 2002) and understanding lectures (Chaudron & Richards, 1986;Dunkel & Davis, 1994;Flowerdew & Tauroza, 1995). Learners' awareness on DMs needs to be developed and supported since they may face problems in comprehending what is produced (Whichmann and Chanet, 2009). ...
... These results are similar to those were found by Fung (2011) and they play crucial roles in the pragmatic meaning of what is produced and the pragmatic competence of the language users (House, 2013; Lenk, 1998;Müller, 2005). In addition, they help learners in comprehending written texts (Jung, 2003) and they have great relationships with the learner's oral fluency (Hasselgren, 2002). Moreover, knowing DMs were seen to help learners understand lectures which is supported by some researchers including Chaudron and Richards (1986), Dunkel andDavis (1994), andFlowerdew andTauroza (1995). ...
... The respondents had the tendency towards written and spoken DMs that they are helpful for the learners in understanding written and spoken texts and making sense of the structures and sequences of written and spoken texts. The results are consistent with Jung (2003) as DMs are helpful in understanding written texts and with Hasselgren (2002) as they help learners in understanding spoken texts (Dunkel & Davis, 1994). On the other hand, the results indicated that English language users also might rely on other key words for comprehension rather than DM that is similar to what Fung (2011) revealed. ...
Taking written and spoken discourse into considerations, Discourse Markers are regarded as crucial elements of written and spoken discourse by native speakers of English. In addition, their pivotal role and use are also inevitable in EFL Language classrooms. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the attitudes Journal of Language Studies. Vol.VI, No. 3 2023, Pages (30-51) _______________________________________ _______________________________________ 31 instructors concerning the role and use of Discourse Markers with regard to Pedagogic value, Identification with the native speaker norm, Pragmatic value, Dispensable value, Acceptance of the local usage, how Discourse Markers are represented in EFL classrooms, and how they should be highlighted in EFL classrooms. A questionnaire was distributed to 106 Kurdish EFL instructors at various universities in Kurdistan Region. The quantitative findings revealed that the instructors had positive attitudes towards the role and use of written and spoken Discourse Markers in EFL classrooms. Discourse Markers were found to have both pragmatic and pedagogic values but they were underrepresented in written and spoken materials in Kurdish EFL classrooms and were not highlighted by the instructors in their writing and speaking classes. The study requires the integration of Discourse Markers in the curriculum for both language productive skills. The implications that were drawn from this study for further studies were to investigate role and use of Discourse Markers in the receptive skills of language and the learners' perceptions concerning this role or use.
... me planning phases, resulting in a contribution to a speakers' productive fluency. However, we acknowledge that there is no obvious clear-cut functional distinction, so that some of the discourse markers we investigate will be polyfunctional and naturally also carry discourse-pragmatic functions in addition to their fluency-enhancing function (e.g . Hasselgren 2002;Götz 2013;Dumont 2018). In line with Shriberg (1994), who suggests an analogy between discourse markers and filled pauses or "fillers" (cf. also Swerts 1998;Pawley and Syder 2000;Götz 2013;Tottie 2011Tottie , 2015, we consider discourse markers to be only one of several equivalent strategies a speaker can select to overcome planning phas ...
... I I think so) and incomplete utterances. 3 However, unlike previous research that 1 As pointed out by one of the reviewers, we acknowledge different approaches towards discourse markers differentiating between discourse markers that increase and those that decrease fluency [for a discussion, see, for example, Crible (2018)]. 2 Please note that although we borrow the term "smallword" from Hasselgren (2002) we use it in a slightly different way by only including vagueness markers, while she also includes discourse markers, which we investigate as a separate category. 3 The different fluencemes will be described in detail in Sect. 3 of this paper when we describe the data extraction and coding procedure. ...
... Previous research on discourse markers in EFL of learners from different language backgrounds has documented a significant relative underuse regarding both their overall frequency, as well as regarding the use of different types of discourse markers by the same speakers (e.g. Erman 1987;De Cock 2000;Hasselgren 2002;Müller 2005;Gilquin 2008;Mukherjee 2009;Götz 2013;Dumont 2018). This heavy underuse might stem from the fact that an explicit teaching of discourse markers as a fluency-enhancing strategy has not been systematically integrated into EFL textbooks (e.g. ...
To overcome planning phases in spontaneous speech production, learners and native speakers use strategies such as (un)filled pauses, smallwords or discourse markers. Small scale studies in this vein have demonstrated that learners differ from native speakers in that they underuse smallwords and discourse markers, and rely on other fluency-enhancing strategies instead. In the present paper, we present a corpus-based study, which investigates fluency-enhancing strategies in four components of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI; Gilquin et al. 2010), covering four learner English varieties, namely Spanish, German, Bulgarian and Japanese. We investigate 216 different fluencemes (i.e. fluency-enhancing features; Götz in Fluency in native and nonnative English speech, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2013) in 200 transcribed interviews with advanced learners of English. An online coding application, which was specially designed and programmed for this project, enables us to cover such a large amount of data. We report on the design, functionality and (dis-)advantages of the online application, the multilevel-coding system we implemented, and the methodological challenges we face in detail. We will also present the findings of one first pilot study where we exhibit considerable variation between and within learners of particular native languages concerning fluenceme frequencies, while distributional patterns of fluencemes are rather similar across varieties.
... Findings from corpus-based analyses of L1 data (and to some extent L2 data) in various registers have been used extensively to inform language teaching, particularly for vocabulary and grammar in English (see, for example, textbook series such as Touchtones, Focus on Vocabulary, and Grammar and Beyond). To an increasing extent, however, L2 corpora have been also used to investigate L2 pragmatics (e.g., Chen & Baker, 2016;De Felice & Deane, 2012;Hasselgren, 2002). ...
... Since the power of corpus linguistics is in its ability to identify linguistic and phraseological features, one can begin the analysis with common linguistic features that are known to convey pragmatic functions (e.g., discourse markers, stance markers, vague language) as has been done in many studies of L2 pragmatics (Gilquin, 2008;Hasselgren, 2002;Müller, 2005). Alternatively, after using corpus-based methods to identify frequent linguistic features (e.g., lexico-grammar, formulaic language, or prosody) these formal elements can be examined for their pragmatic functions. ...
... Pragmatic markers 'signal transitions in the evolving process of the conversation, index the relation of an utterance to the preceding context, and indicate an interactive relationship between speaker, hearer, and message' (Fung & Carter, 2007, p. 411). As such, we use the term pragmatic markers (PMs) to include discourse markers (Müller, 2005), 'smallwords' (Gilquin, 2008;Hasselgren, 2002), general extenders (Fernández, 2013;Fernández & Yuldashev, 2011), and stance markers (Belz & Vyatkina, 2008;Gablasova & Brezina, 2015). The investigation of PMs has been one of the most fruitful areas of corpus-based studies of L2 pragmatics. ...
... This advancement opened remarkable vistas for investigating and probing language practices in a variety of ways and perspectives. For instance, early studies focused on analyzing how a particular language is used by native and non-native speakers and writers (Meunier, 2002;Muller, 2005;Schmid, 1990). In this aspect, the majority of the researchers have comparatively analyzed native English and other language speakers' and writers' use of English in both spoken and written discourse. ...
... Further studies with larger corpora may yield varied results and findings and can add to the discussion developed in this study. 13 it was found that 13 it is important to 37 12 knowledge of a third 12 than half of the 38 12 results of the study 12 the results of this 39 12 of a third language 12 in this study the 40 12 both teachers and students 12 the purpose of this 41 12 promotion of learner autonomy 12 in the current study 42 12 between teacher and students 12 to the fact that 43 12 foreign language reading anxiety 12 on the use of 44 12 of the targeted students 12 the extent to which 45 11 in the following excerpt 11 half of the teachers 46 11 be attributed to 11 the process of learning 47 11 the promotion of learner 11 the use of social 48 11 that most of the 11 affective factors involved in 49 11 in the form of 11 in the process of 50 11 proficiency in English reading 10 the target language and 51 10 with the findings of 10 that there is a 52 10 an online peer review 10 there is a need 53 10 for the purpose of 10 in the efl classroom 54 10 to the fact that 10 results of the study 55 10 in the following excerpts 10 the most frequently used 56 10 at the same time 10 ...
Phraseological or multi-word-pattern corpus-driven analysis of language in use has offered significant insights in recent years into how linguistic discourse can vary. This variation has been researched across genres, registers, disciplines, and native or non-native differences. However, very few studies have presented the gender-based analysis of academic research discourse within the EFL/ESL perspective. The current study explored the use of lexical bundles practiced by male and female researchers working in the EFL/ESL academic context within KSA. Corpora comprising almost 300,000 words including 68 research articles, 36 by female and 32 by male researchers were collected and run through Lancsbox 6.0 software package. The analysis was based on the frequency and structural patterns across the selected data. For the critical analysis of structural patterns, the structural taxonomy framework offered by Gezegin-Bal (2109) adapted from Biber et al. (1999) was employed. As established by the findings of the study, prepositional and noun phrases remained overwhelmingly more frequent and common in both corpora. There were no significant gender-based differences in the use of lexical bundles found which reflects that both male and female researchers practiced similar expressions in their use of the English language.
... There has also been some longitudinal research conducted, which indicates that there is a typical developmental sequence in learning the use of English past tense-aspect forms. Namely, English as a second language (ESL) learners tend to learn to use the simple past tense correctly before using the past progressive, and that use of the past progressive precedes the emergence of the present perfect, which in turn precedes the emergence of the past perfect (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000;Bardovi-Harlig& Comajoan, 2008).However, within the order of emergence of verb tense-aspect forms, there is a great deal of individual variation (Housen, 2002).There is also research indicating that learners tend to mix up similar verb tense-aspect forms. ESL learners tend to confuse the use of the present perfect with the simple past, and to a lesser extent, the past perfect (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000).Some studies also support the contention that adverbials play a role in the use of past tense morphology (Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds, 1995).In addition, some research indicates that L1 influence may play a role in the acquisition of past tense-aspect forms (Collins, 2002;Tiittanen, 2013;Yang & Huang, 2004;Zhang & Liu, 2016). ...
... L2 learners are influenced by certain cognitive principles in their learning of verb tense-aspect forms.Previous studies of L2 tense-aspect acquisition have found that L2 learners at all levels of development more frequently use prototypical combinations of tense and aspect than nonprototypical combinations (Li & Shirai, 2000). For instance, Tiittanen (2019) found that the ESL participants in his study used progressive verb forms primarily with activities.This has ramifications in terms of the influence of lexical aspect on verb tense-aspect forms (Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds, 1995;Collins, 2004;Housen, 2002).Because of the lexical aspect, there are findings 'that learners of English, irrespective of their L1, show a tendency to add the progressive -ing affix to verbs that semantically entail an ongoing situation or something dynamic (e.g. play, swim, run) …' (Dose-Heidelmayer &Gotz, 2016, p. 232). ...
This exploratory study investigated the contexts in which a group of native Mandarin ESL learners, with high knowledge of the simple past tense, would use the present perfect, past perfect and past progressive on a fill-in-the-gaps task. The participants frequently correctly used the past perfect form on a task item requiring these forms, but they also often oversupplied the present perfect, past perfect and, to a lesser extent, the past progressive, on the task. Participants who correctly supplied the past perfect had a higher overall level of grammatical knowledge than those that did not. The learners reported that the presence of adverbials sometimes led them to their choice of the present perfect or past perfect. The oversuppliances of the past progressive were primarily atelic activities. These results mirror other studies in the confusion between past tense forms, influence of adverbials and lexical aspect. They may also possibly indicate L1 influence from Mandarin.
... The LONGDALE also includes recordings of English learners of French (EN_FR), but only of young children. In this respect, this corpus is similar to FLLOC (French Learner Language Oral Corpus, see Myles and Mitchell 2007), in which the children are aged 7 to 11, or to CYLIL (The Corpus of Young Learner Interlanguage, see Housen 2002), which contains English L2 recordings of school pupils of different European nationalities, French being one of them. ...
... The creation of the corpus started in 1990 at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, by Alex Housen (Housen 2002). The oral interviews consisted of informal free conversation and semi-guided speech tasks. ...
... We also measured the learner's use of smallwords to investigate lexical development. Their range was based on Hasselgren's (2002) list of smallwords and on those specific to our own corpus (i.e., smallwords occurring with an overall frequency of six times or more in the entire corpus). Polysemous expressions that did not conform to Hasselgren's working definition of smallwords were excluded from the smallword count in this study. ...
... The development in EPs was moderately linear (r = −.696) and was at a level typical of advanced L2 speakers (Götz, 2013). There was no clear trend for FPs, which were, however, in the same range as NSs (Hasselgren, 2002). Finally, marked change was evident in the repair fluency measures. ...
This article reports a longitudinal case study of two German high‐school exchange students’ 5.5‐month study abroad (SA) in New Zealand, examining their social lives and oral second language (L2) development. Six informal interviews, weekly diary entries, and monthly summaries were used to elicit data about their overseas experiences and reflections associated with them. The qualitative analysis investigated the nature of the students’ social lives at school, in their homestay, in their hobbies, and during their free time. The results demonstrated that opportunities for L2 engagement varied considerably with context—some affording and others restricting interaction. Especially the presence of co‐nationals impeded L2 interaction and required the students to seek out opportunities themselves—an effort that the students were not always willing to make. For the quantitative analysis, the interview data were coded using multiple measures of complexity, accuracy, lexis, and fluency (CALF). Compared to previous studies, the results showed that all CALF dimensions improved during SA, but just for one student and not in a linear fashion. The two learners’ L2 profiles varied considerably, demonstrating that development is dynamic and unique and that interpretations of it need to take account of the learners’ social contexts and what they make of these.
... Crystal 1988;House 2013), they often go unnoticed during an interaction or, on the other hand, can be perceived as superfluous and even detrimental if used under the wrong conditions. Several non-academic articles and online videos provide examples of such a negative attitude towards "cringing verbal tics", especially when used quite frequently. 1 Yet, authors in fluency research tend to agree on the positive effects of DMs, especially in second language acquisition where they are associated with naturalness, automaticity and efficient planning strategies (Hasselgren 2002;Götz 2013). DMs are indeed intrinsically linked to fluency: they constitute windows on the cognitive processes behind speech production and perception, with many of their functions being directly connected to (dis)fluency moves (e.g. ...
... The first of these investigates discourse markers within second language fluency: these studies are mostly quantitative and compare the frequency and variety of discourse markers in native (L1) vs. non-native (L2) corpus data. This line of work relates to general issues of language acquisition such as phraseological competence (De Cock et al. 1998), fossilization (Romero Trillo 2002, Zhao 2013, proficiency levels (Hasselgren 2002) or type of input (Fung & Carter 2007, Gilquin 2016). ...
Discourse markers have a central role in planning and repairing processes of speech production. They relate with fluency and disfluency phenomena such as pauses, repetitions and reformulations. Their polyfunctionality is challenging and few form-function mappings are stable cross-linguistically. This study combines a functional and a structural approach to discourse markers and their combination with and within repetitions and self-repairs in native English, French and Spanish, in order to establish the inter-relation between these three fluency-related devices and to find potentially universal patterns of use. Qualitative coding and quantitative analyses of categories of markers and repairs allowed us to identify discourse markers which are specific to repair sequences and others which are much more pervasive. Combinations with repetitions vary across languages and repair types. Our findings fill a gap in cross-linguistic fluency research, disentangle the overlap between discourse markers, repairs and repetitions, and can be integrated into pedagogical materials.
... Following the students' suggestions on integrating DDL into conventional teaching might create an effective learning environment especially for learners with different learning styles. In line with students' preferences, Meunier (2002) also suggests using corpora as a complementary method as not all types of exercises are compatible with corpus practice. ...
Introduction: Although extensive studies have been carried out on the effectiveness of corpora on teaching vocabulary, the exploration of whether learners can benefit from a pedagogical corpus, particularly regarding hands-on engagement by lower-level learners, has received little attention. Purpose: To address this gap in the literature, this study sets out to explore the effectiveness of Data-Driven Learning (DDL) in enhancing the vocabulary acquisition of EFL students at a state university in Turkey through a pedagogical corpus. Method: The quasi-experimental study employed a mixed-method research design, in which both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through vocabulary tests, student questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Fifty-eight low-level students with an average age of 19 served as participants. The experimental group made use of hands-on concordancing while the control group received conventional course book-based instruction to learn the target words. Results: The results indicate that pedagogical corpora have significant potential in facilitating vocabulary learning of low-level learners. The vocabulary tests revealed that the students who practiced with DDL outperformed the students who received traditional vocabulary instruction in both the post-test and the delayed post-test. The findings from student questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews also denoted that the participants held positive attitudes towards using concordancing to expand their vocabulary and grow aware of some aspects of words such as part of speech information, different meanings and usages, lexico-grammatical structures, and collocations. Conclusion: The present study provides useful implications for collection and use of a pedagogical corpus for classroom use.
... In a similar vein, Thewissen (2015) used error-tagged data from ICLE to feed learner corpus-attested accuracy information into the existing CEFR descriptors for grammatical accuracy, vocabulary control, and orthographic control at proficiency levels B1, B2, C1, and C2. O'Donnell et al. (2009), for their part, report on the TREACLE 2 project which uses two learner corpora, namely WriCLE (Rollinson & Mendikoetxea, 2010) and MiLC (Andreu et al., 2010) and their error codes to capture the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking EFL learners at different proficiency levels. This line of LCR has shown that, rather than developing linearly, accuracy is a dynamic construct in its own right, with different error types following various developmental paths across the proficiency range. ...
... This is compatible with the principles of learner corpora since they are compiled as general sources to deal with a great number of research questions that are established after the data collection. However, there are some corpora addressing more explanatory research questions (Housen, 2002;Tono, 2000). Such corpora aim to revisit some second language theories and hypotheses from the corpus linguistics perspective. ...
Many academic institutions worldwide have compelled academicians to publish their works in high-impact international journals as a part of institutional hiring, promotion and reward. Besides, at many universities around the world publishing in international indexed journals has even become a prerequisite for doctoral students to obtain their degree. In this sense, the number of academic members and research students, willing to secure publication in international arena which is overwhelmingly dominated by English, are increasing. However, many scholars experience a number of troubles and difficulties in writing for publication processes. Therefore, in order to help them improve both the quantity and quality of their cientific outputs, it is very important to identify the problems scholars face in their
publication process. This study aims to investigate the linguistic problems experienced by Turkish scholars in their writing for publication process. For this reason, The Multidisciplinary Corpus of Writing for Publication was compiled as a part of this study. It consists of 216 unedited research articles written by Turkish scholars from five disciplines: communication, economics, education, engineering, and medicine. In addition, a reference corpus, consisting of 163 published research articles written by Native Speakers of English was compiled for the comparison of the Turkish corpus. Three linguistic dimensions were examined: lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and errors they made in their manuscripts. Lexical diversity was investigated using three different measures: type/token ratio, standardized type/token ratio, and moving average type/ token ratio. In the analysis of syntactic complexity, Lu’s (2010) L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA) was used.
Finally, grammatical errors were investigated using Louvain Error
Tagging Taxonomy in which grammatical errors were analyzed in 8 broad categories which were broken down into 54 subdomains.
... García 2014;Tham, Chau, and Thang 2020;Wei and García 2022), and learner corpus research (e.g. Chau 2012Chau , 2015Man and Chau 2019;Man et al. 2021). ...
English features prominently in global communication as part of the knowledge economy in Indonesia and worldwide. Meritocracy represents a key concept within the rhetoric of this economy, as it promises that how well people do in life is not determined by external matters, but mostly by how hard they try. Included here is how hard they study English, and how well they perform on measures of English proficiency. No previous research has, however, considered English teachers' beliefs about the role of English in meritocracy. This is perhaps surprising given that the literature has increasingly highlighted the role of teachers as changemakers. To explore this issue, the present study considered the views of 260 English teachers in Indonesia. Findings revealed statistically significant correlations between teachers' beliefs in meritocracy for their own careers and for their students, on the one hand, and their views of English as a tool for success, on the other hand. This study not only makes an empirical contribution to the limited literature on the role of meritocracy in language education, but also advances conversation on language education from a multilingual and multicultural perspective by addressing the limits of meritocracy through Global Englishes with a translanguaging orientation.
... This is because textbooks are designed for learners. A prioritization of a learner focus in corpus-based studies is fully endorsed in the writings, among many others, of Timmis (2015), Granger (2002), Meunier (2002), and Kennedy (1998). ...
This study demonstrates how native and learner corpora can enhance modal verb treatment in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks used in mainland China. Data analysis compares modal verbs in the textbook and native corpus by referring to distributional features, semantic functions and co-occurring constructions; and the analysis of the learner corpus refers to the use/misuse of modal verbs. A corpora comparison considers the authenticity of textbook language; and examination of learner use/misuse of modal verbs provides a learner perspective for textbook presentation that is applicable to learning difficulties. In this regard, this study highlights discrepancies between textbook treatment of modal verbs and authentic modal use in constructions, distributions and semantic functions, and its application of error analysis reveals inter/intra-linguistic interference in the use of modal verbs. This study can thus contribute to a corpus-informed and learner-centered design of grammar presentation in EFL textbooks that enhances the authenticity and appropriateness of textbook language for target learners.
... Corpusurile de limbă produsă de vorbitori nativi și non-nativi permit realizarea unor comparații (Vyatkina 2013): în unele situații, non-nativii avansați folosesc mai multe verbe modale decât nativii în textele academice (Aijmer 2002;Maden-Weinberger 2008), nonnativii folosesc mai mulți intensificatori și mai puțini atenuatori (hedges), creșterea fluenței în LS conduce la diminuarea mărcilor ezitării (pauze) și la creșterea frecvenței marcatorilor discursivi (Hasselgren 2002;Gilquin 2008). ...
Volumul include un corpus de texte autentice de română ca limbă străină (RLS), produse de vorbitori non-nativi, în cadrul programului Anului Pregătitor al Universității din București: texte scrise și transcrieri ale unor interacțiuni directe controlate sau (semi)libere.
Corpusul este precedat de un studiu introductiv dedicat problematicii teoretice a achiziției RLS pe bază de corpus și a implicațiilor practice, de ordin didactic. Sunt propuse, totodată, câteva aplicații – din perspectivă lingvistică și cultural-antropologică, pentru a evidenţia posibile direcții de cercetare care pot fi urmate pe baza analizei de corpus RLS.
Prin datele autentice pe care le conține, corpusul oferă un material de analiză complex, de interes pentru domenii diverse, lingvistice și culturale: achiziția și didactica RLS; pragmatică; sociolingvistică; tipologie lingvistică; lingvistică contrastivă; lingvistică culturală; comunicare interpersonală și interculturală; antropologie culturală; sociologie etc. În același timp, prin conținutul trans-, multi- şi intercultural specific, original și neprelucrat (inclusiv din punctul de vedere al ideilor vehiculate), corpusul se poate adresa și lecturii unui cititor nespecialist. Textele pun în lumină aspecte culturale interesante, cu o extensie mai largă, dincolo de problemele specifice ale achiziţiei limbii: perspectiva străinului asupra societăţii, limbii şi culturii române, percepţia asemănărilor şi a diferenţelor culturale sau elementele de specificitate culturală.
... The performances in all levels display different success rate, thereby suggesting inter-level differences in the comprehension and learning of English tenses. This finding corroborates the findings of Housen (2002) with regard to the great deal of individual variation in usage of tense forms. The statistical analysis of the variable data using ANOVA and Tukey Post Hoc test indicates that the students of level one attain the least success in the use of the correct forms of the three English tenses under consideration in this study. ...
The current study is an attempt to examine the learning and comprehension patterns of English tense categories by Yemeni EFL students at the different levels of the undergraduate program at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts at Sana’a University. The study also brings to light the English tense categories which the Yemeni EFL students find difficult to learn and hence commit errors in these categories. The data of the study comprised inputs from 120 students covering the four levels, 30 students from each, of EFL undergraduate program. The study used the one-way analysis of variance ANOVA in SPSS 0.22 and Tukey Post Hoc test to analyze the data. The statistical analysis indicated that (1) there is a significant difference in the usage of the various English tense categories across the four levels; (2) the errors committed are not equally distributed within all English tense categories; (3) the Tukey Post Hoc Test indicated a similar pattern of statistically significant difference across all four levels. Furthermore, the category of English future tense turned out to be the most problematic among the other categories for the Yemeni EFL students. It has received the lowest correct answers across the four levels. Lastly, the negative role of the influence of Arabic has been clearly identified to affect the process of learning and comprehension of English tense categories, especially for level one students. The study concluded with some pedagogical implications to the syllabus makers and EFL teachers.
... Boulton and Cobb (2017) state that most corpora are composed of authentic native language well beyond the comfort level of many learners. In addition, the resulting hints may be confusing and overwhelming due to the quantity of information acquired (Meunier, 2002), which can lead learners to flawed conclusions regarding language use. Similarly, Whistle (1999) emphasizes that DDL-based activities cannot exceed a maximum of 30 minutes, and must have additional types of tasks and dynamics so that learners do not find the approach repetitive, mechanic and hard. ...
This paper presents the implementation of a didactic unit based on Singer’s proposal for data-driven learning (DDL) within a task-based (TB) framework in the context of Chil-ean translation education. The didactic intervention has four stages: 1) data collection from students’ preferred multimodal consumption in order to generate a written corpus based on the transcription of popular online TV series; 2) the design of a didactic unit that graduates concordance software use and student autonomy by means of linguistic tasks; 3) the appli-cation of the approach in an English Language 7 course unit with 24 participants at the Translation Studies undergraduate program at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and 4) the evalu-ation of the intervention by means of an online questionnaire. Students’ and lecturers’ perceptions suggest that a DDL-TB approach is suitable for language teaching in translator edu-cation. Further recommendations to improve future DDL-TB projects are also provided.
... The researchers have observed that the performances of the students at different levels show a lot of variation in the comprehension of English aspects. However, this finding is consistent with the findings by Housen (2002) with regard to the great deal of individual variation in tense and aspect forms. On the other side, there is a great deal of differences in the rate of errors committed by students at different levels. ...
... They are challenging to forgo when starting, maintaining, and ending conversations in the foreign language; to take and transfer the turn or to introduce and conclude a topic or to ensure mutual understanding. Their appropriate use facilitates a higher level of speaking fluency (Hasselgren 2002), while their complete absence can cause confounding effects and the impression of "clumsy" and "unskillful" speech (Delahaie 2009:17). The fact that discourse particles are essential communicative components from the pragmatic point of view is contrasted by the complexity of their linguistic description and the difficulty of their learning and teaching in L2. ...
Introduction to the special issue
Borreguero Zuloaga, M., Siebold, K. & Thörle, B. (eds.), Methodological Approaches to Studying Discourse Particles in L2. Corpus Pragmatics (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-021-00100-9
... The main advantages of these corpora are their large size and their arguably higher degree of representativeness. The following statement by Housen (2002) underlines this quantitative asset: "computer-aided language learner corpus research provides a much needed quantificational basis" (p. 78) for current SLA hypotheses and makes it possible to "empirically validate previous research findings obtained from smaller transcripts, as well as to test explanatory hypotheses about pace-setting factors in second language acquisition" (p.108). ...
... Since our aim is to figure out L2 cultural conventions of Turkish-speaking academic writers in these fields, we need to concentrate on the studies that present detailed analysis of linguistic devices. As stated by Meunier (2002), corpus-based studies have led the identification of patterned norms of English language with regards to grammatical and lexical patterns. Focusing on grammatical patterns in various text types in language can make grammatical description of different types of communication in various contexts clearer. ...
... Contrary to the assumption that learners should be exposed exclusively to authentic native data, information about typical difficulties met by learners is no less important in language teaching and learning (Nesselhauf, 2004). Learner data provide a valuable source of evidence about language development and use (Gablasova, Brezina, & McEnery, 2017), bear out intuitions about error-prone language items for specific learner populations (Cotos, 2014;Nesselhauf, 2004), and allow teachers to design and deliver pedagogical treatments accordingly (Chen, 2010;Meunier, 2002). The combined use of native-speaker and learner corpora mitigates the potential negative impact associated with exposure to undesirable language use (Callies, 2019;Nesselhauf, 2004) and has been found to lead to more learning gains than DDL activities based on native data alone (Cotos, 2014). ...
This article reports on an experimental study that set out to investigate and compare the effectiveness of a direct and an indirect approach to data-driven learning (DDL) in facilitating Chinese learners’ mastery of a challenging type of lexico-grammatical resource (i.e. hedges) in an undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writing class. The study adopted a pretest/posttest/delayed posttest randomized two treatment design. The two experimental groups received, respectively, direct and indirect DDL instruction in the use of hedges in English academic writing. The direct approach involved students in conducting guided searches and analyses of target hedges in online corpora, whereas the indirect approach featured the use of corpus-informed, paper-and-pen learning tasks. Within- and between-group analyses of the participants’ performances on the three tests yielded evidence of both the strengths and limitations of the two approaches. A questionnaire survey revealed the participants’ favorable attitudes toward the incorporation of corpora in classroom teaching, as well as their perceptions of the affordances and constraints of DDL. The article concludes with a discussion of the present study’s limitations and recommendations for future DDL research in EFL classrooms.
... Similarly, Skehan (2009) understands fluency as speakers' ability to speak without interruption at a rate which most people expect. It has been argued that this ability may be linked to the use of prefabricated chunks and formulaic language (Towell, Hawkins, & Bazergui, 1996), or discourse markers (Hasselgren, 2002), whose fast retrieval and automatized production allows the speaker to gain time for formulating subsequent utterances and thus to speak with fewer interruptions. Segalowitz (2010) points out that fluency is multidimensional but in another sense: it is closely linked to the smoothness (and fluency) of the underlying cognitive processes (cognitive fluency). ...
In its descriptors for oral fluency the Common European Framework of Reference includes frequent references to the tempo of speech and the use of pausing. The present study aims to provide empirical evidence that these fluency phenomena exist; it also seeks to establish how they distinguish two different levels of proficiency (B2 and C1) among L2 English speakers as well as between these speakers and native speakers. The analysis is based on a large dataset of 50 native English speakers and 89 learners of English (derived from the LOCNEC corpus, and from the Czech and Taiwanese sub-corpora of LINDSEI); it compares their speech rates and the frequency and location of unfilled pauses in picture description tasks. Significant differences are found between all the groups showing that even between B2 and C1 levels the growth of proficiency is accompanied by an increase in speech rate and a decrease in the frequency of pausing, particularly within clauses and within constituents. By establishing the ranges of these values, the study sets possible targets which can be exploited for the purposes of language teaching and assessment.
... A common formulation of this Aspect Hypothesis is that the progressive grammatical marker "spreads" as the proficiency of the learner improves, that is appearing first in activities, second in accomplishments and so forth. This "spreading" is said to be evident in the distributional frequency of progressive markers, these forms being usually most frequent in activities, second-most frequent in accomplishments etcetera (Housen, 2002). ...
... In what follows, I will describe the data which will be analysed here with the purpose of obtaining sets of linguistic determinants of complexity in learner and native academic language. The L2 data comprise examples of academic writing retrieved from the Written Corpus of Learner English (WRICLE; Rollinson & Mendikoetxea, 2010), specifically essays written in English by students in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, whose L1 is Spanish. Placement tests were performed in order to categorise the essays according to the CEFR levels -the data sample includes learner academic language from the A2 to the C2 levels. ...
This collection sheds light on the ways in which corpus linguistics and the use of learner corpora might be applied to the study of academic discourse, revealing linguistic and rhetorical patterns and insights into variation across a range of disciplinary genres. Organized into three sections, the book highlights key tools and methodologies in corpus analysis to study such features as discourse markers, lexical bundles, linguistic complexity, lexico-grammatical conventions, and modality in case studies in studies of academic discourse, both in a second language and in English for specific purposes. The volume features examples from disciplinary genres not often covered in the existing literature, including MA theses, academic book reviews, and online student forums. Taken together with the study of learner corpora, the book demonstrates the impact of corpus linguistic tools in better understanding linguistic patterns of specific languages and language use and in turn, their role in helping to identify the needs of language learners. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, and English for Specific Purposes.
... Berko, 1958;Breiteneder, 2005;Brown, 1973; Dröschel, 2011;Dulay & Burt, 1974;Fisher, 1985;Haznedar, 2001;Housen, 2002;Ionin & Wexler, 2002;Jensen, 2016;Jensen, Slabakova & Westergaard, 2017;Keeney & Wolfe, 1972;Neff et al., 2007;Ponmani & Mekala, 2016;Radford, 1990;Slabakova & Gajdos, 2008;Slabakova, 2016Slabakova, , 2019Wee, Sim & Jusoff, 2009;White, 2003. ...
Subject-verb agreement in English is a complex area that causes problems for learners. It is important to determine which aspects of this topic are most difficult to learn and automatize so that we can focus on these in the language classroom. The present paper aims to make a contribution by presenting data on subject-verb agreement among Norwegian adolescents (12-13 and 15-16 years old). The research question is whether learners make more mistakes with some types of subject than with others. A main finding is that there are more errors with noun subjects than with personal pronoun subjects. It is argued that this is the result of drilling of paradigms as well as high frequencies in the input and output. Another finding is that the error rate is particularly high when the subject consists of two or more conjoined noun phrases. This fact is explained in terms of 'Agreement Attraction' (Strang 1966). On the basis of the data, it is suggested that the teaching of subject-verb agreement should focus more on noun subjects, including conjoined subject noun phrases.
... A common formulation of this Aspect Hypothesis is that the progressive grammatical marker "spreads" as the proficiency of the learner improves, that is appearing first in activities, second in accomplishments and so forth. This "spreading" is said to be evident in the distributional frequency of progressive markers, these forms being usually most frequent in activities, second-most frequent in accomplishments etcetera (Housen, 2002). ...
Mobile devices, technology such as smartphones and tablets, are resulting in escalating transformations of the educational world, particularly as an aid to language acquisition.This study examined the ways Thai high-school students use mobile devices to aid learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in educational settings, and if school size and location affects the level of access and ability students have. The participants were two hundred and seventy-seven students studying in eight schools in Southern Thailand, which were split into urban and rural sub-groups during analysis. Participants completed a questionnaire regarding access, time spent using devices in school, and the specific ways they used mobile devices for EFL related school work. The findings indicated that whilst almost all students had ability and access to mobile devices, there were significant differences (p < 0.01) across all items relating to urban and rural school location, due to what appeared to be policy issues. Recommendations are made for schools and policymakers to promote the use of mobile devices, and the ways EFL students reported using and not using mobile devices are detailed, allowing suggestions for teachers on which specific uses to promote.
... 3, the linguistic immersion in a context of studying abroad seems to have an effect on the speaker's fluency in L2 (Freed 1995;Möhle and Raupach 1983;Towell et al. 1996). DMs are generally ascribed among the phenomena participating to the general fluency of speech (Hasselgren 2002;Götz 2013;Crible 2018): they constitute fundamental devices for the organization of the discourse and the creation of coherent connections between its parts, and, at the same time, they are the linguistic manifestation of the thinking process taking place during speech production. As a matter of fact, in our data in both L1 and L2 productions, and in both pre-and post-Erasmus conditions, DMs often co-occur with various types of hesitation phenomena, as filled and silent pauses, lengthened sounds, repetition or false-starts. ...
This paper investigates the effect of a period of study in Italy on the use of discourse markers (DMs) by Belgian-Dutch learners of Italian as a second language (L2). We recorded dialogical exchanges between 8 Belgian-Dutch learners of L2 Italian, before and after an Erasmus exchange of 6 months in an Italian university. The results of our investigation reveal that, both pre- and post-Erasmus, the most used DMs are sì ‘yes’, ok, allora ‘so, then’, quindi ‘then, therefore’, dunque ‘therefore’, be’ ‘well’. Our research also shows that the main effect of the period of study abroad is the increased variation of the pragmatic functions of DMs used by the L2 speakers. Whereas before the Erasmus, DMs are employed almost exclusively with an interactional function, after the Erasmus their spectrum of functions is broaden to cognitive and the meta-discursive functions. Interestingly, we also observe that after the Erasmus, some DMs are used with different non-target functions: we argue that these uses must be analyzed as interferences with the learners’ language background. We conclude the paper with some remarks on the effect of the period of study abroad on L2 fluency, analyzing the clustering of DMs with filled pauses.
... Teachers' input to material writing and adaptation is crucial as their knowledge of the students in their classes allows them to judge and assess the appropriateness of the adapted and tailored material for their students. Frontline teachers and textbook writers could make use of corpus data to design tasks for students (Johns, 1991;Mindt, 1997;McCarthy, 1998;Meunier, 2002;Sinclair, 1991Sinclair, , 1997Sinclair, , 2001Sinclair, , 2004Tognini-Bonelli, 1996Tribble & Jones, 1990). These classroom activities can focus on the linguistic realizations of thanking in L2 with the use of corpus evidence. ...
... Teachers' input to material writing and adaptation is crucial as their knowledge of the students in their classes allows them to judge and assess the appropriateness of the adapted and tailored material for their students. Frontline teachers and textbook writers could make use of corpus data to design tasks for students (Johns, 1991;Mindt, 1997;McCarthy, 1998;Meunier, 2002;Sinclair, 1991Sinclair, , 1997Sinclair, , 2001Sinclair, , 2004Tognini-Bonelli, 1996Tribble & Jones, 1990). These classroom activities can focus on the linguistic realizations of thanking in L2 with the use of corpus evidence. ...
... Nesselhauf, 2005;Wang, 2016), and that full control of language-specific, idiomatic, and collocational uses of common verbs often develop later in the language learning process. EFL learners often show difficulty identifying correct verb forms and appropriate functions because of the lack of structural congruity with their linguistic system (Housen, 2002). Furthermore, some verbs are difficult to decode, and EFL learners have difficulty encoding their restricted collocations (De Cock & Granger, 2004). ...
... 1.1 Literature review Meunier (2002) pointed out the possibility of the development of activities using learners' corpora based on the concept of data driven learning (DDL): learning through examples. He claimed that learners could become more conscious of how to use target expressions though DDL activities, such as comparison activities between native data and their own language, using a concordancer, software which provides examples of target words and phrases. ...
The researcher has developed a CMC application with which both teachers and learners can review the learners' language. Through the actual use in the curriculum, she examines how their use of connective devices has been changed and discusses how we can facilitate their skills toward more advanced levels with the application.
... Learner corpora are defined as electronically stored data of authentic usage in EFL context which are gathered in accordance to predetermined sets of criteria for teaching objectives (Meng Huai, 2012). Since 1990s, that is to say, when learner corpora found their way to second language teaching and learning, there has been a growing interest in the application of corpora in foreign language teaching and learning (Pravec, 2002;Keck, 2004;Myles, 2005). ...
... Learner corpora are defined as electronically stored data of authentic usage in EFL context which are gathered in accordance to predetermined sets of criteria for teaching objectives (Meng Huai, 2012). Since 1990s, that is to say, when learner corpora found their way to second language teaching and learning, there has been a growing interest in the application of corpora in foreign language teaching and learning (Pravec, 2002;Keck, 2004;Myles, 2005). ...
Purpose
In spite of the growing interest in using corpora in language teaching and learning, applying computers and software (especially corpora software) is still new in second language teaching and learning. In addition, employing a learner corpus-based perspective in teaching metadiscourse features in International English Language Testing System (IELTS) writing tasks is not reported to the best knowledge of the researchers. Understanding and spotting this gap, the purpose of this paper is to utilize a learner corpus-based approach in teaching metadiscourse features and investigate its possible impacts on IELTS writing performance of the Iranian second language learners. Therefore, this study addressed the following research questions and hypotheses.
Design/methodology/approach
The current research utilized a quasi-experimental research design. In addition, this research used a learner corpus-based methodology. The corpus-based methodology was exploited to enable the researchers to have access to a large body of authentic language materials. In other words, a corpus-based methodology was used due to the fact that it made it possible for the researchers to elicit the metadiscourse features from a large number of authentic writing materials and to employ them during the treatment process with authentic examples.
Findings
The findings showed that there was a positive correlation between teaching metadiscourse features and writing performance of IELTS learners; in that, teaching metadiscourse features could soar the writing performance of the subjects. In addition, interactional metadiscourse features had more impact than interactive metadiscourse features on writing performance.
Practical implications
The results of this research can have useful implications for second language teachers and learners as well as researchers in learner corpus as they can learn the creation and application of learner corpora in second language teaching and learning.
Originality/value
This paper is value in that it uses corpus software and methodology in teaching metadiscourse features in writing section of IELTS test.
Ali Panahi and Hassan Mohebbi systematically reviewed Brian MacWhinney's 55 years of research and publication in language education and psychology. The study was conducted in varying sections. Section 1 illustrates a methodology for the systematic review. It presents an impressionistic framework based on which the reviewers developed some exclusion and inclusion rules. Section 2 is concerned with MacWhinney's overall achievements and contributions; all his research publications were estimated to stand at 540 items. Section 3 presents the themes (micro-themes and macro-themes) in MacWhinney's research works and presents the extracted technical jargons, terms and concepts for both language education (1548 items) and psychology (447 items). Added to this, nine meta-themes were inferred and extracted for all of his research publications. Section 4 provides a systematic review of his research works. As a result, with reference to the subjective criteria and exclusion and inclusion rules, his research works, i.e., articles, book chapters and books, were systematically reviewed. In the end, Brian MacWhinney provided his own reflection and discussion.
This corpus-based study explored the development of cohesive devices in the writing of Chinese beginner learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) over a three-year span. Quantitative analysis utilizing the Tool for Automatic Analysis of Cohesion (TAACO) was conducted on a longitudinal learner corpus comprising over 500 exam essays. Lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse features were examined to identify reliable indices for tracking learners’ progressive mastery of cohesion. Results revealed that pronoun-related features, including pronoun density and repetition, significantly differed across year pairs and robustly predicted writing development. However, most lexical and connective indices showed ambiguous trajectories over time. The findings highlight the vital role of pronouns in building coherence for novice writers and underscore persistent difficulties in acquiring sophisticated content words and their collocations. This study contributes data-driven insights into the nonlinear processes and enduring challenges shaping EFL beginners’ cohesive competence. It demonstrates the value of computational tools and learner corpora in exploring discourse acquisition.
The present study investigates Korean learners’ use of English lexical verb forms and identifies learner deviations from native usage patterns. It examines the frequencies of six verb forms (i.e., base, present, third-person singular, past, gerund, and past participle) in a native and a learner corpus of argumentative speeches. The study reveals that certain verb forms are over-
or underused by Korean learners of L2 English, compared to native speakers of English. It is also found that L2 overuse and underuse of verb forms are closely related to Korean learners’ overreliance on or avoidance of major lexico-grammatical patterns around the verb forms (e.g., to + base verb). These findings have pedagogical implications for teaching Korean learners to use various verb forms with major lexico-grammatical patterns in English speaking.
This article deals with applied cognitive corpus linguistics, that is, the combined use of cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics for pedagogical purposes. It describes the main features of each framework in terms of teaching applications and underlines their complementarity. Through several illustrations, it shows how applied cognitive corpus linguistics combines the benefits of corpus data (authenticity, quantification, diversification of genres, access to learner production, etc.) with those of cognitive principles (linguistic motivation, enhanced salience, realignment of form and meaning, etc.) in ways that are expected to foster the development of the learner’s language system.
The present study investigates the use of filled pauses by advanced learners of English
from eleven L1 backgrounds with and without taking L1 into consideration. The results
of these analyses show that while some non-linguistic variables indeed have a highly
significant effect on learners’ use of filled pauses regardless of their L1 (e.g. the number
of years the learners have learned English at school, whether or not they had stayed
abroad in an English-speaking country, but also the relationship with the interviewer
and the interviewer’s gender), other variables have no significant effect on the learners’
performance at all (e.g. the interview topic or the learners’ gender). These findings are
discussed with regard to their implications on learner corpus research in general as well
as on the L1-specific fluency analyses of spoken learner performance in particular.
Abstract
This study is an attempt to investigate the written corpora of Iraqi EFL medical students
at the level of morphosyntax. The study aims to identify, classify, and supply a plausible
interpretation for the different morphosyntactic errors made by the learners. It is hypothesized that Iraqi EFL human and veterinary medical students face serious difficulties in the area of morphosyntactic elements at both recognition and production levels.
To achieve the study aims, two types of procedures have been followed: theoretical and
practical. Theoretically, a framework of morphosyntax is presented including its definitions, elements, uses, etc. Practically, a corpus of (200) English written compositions was collected from (100) human and (100) veterinary medical students at human and veterinary medicine colleges at the University of Diyala. They have experienced approximately the same number of years of education through primary and secondary education. All of the participants come from a non-English speaking background and hardly communicate in English outside the school. The data used in the study are participants’ written essays and their responses to 25 multiple-choice items in an achievement test prepared for the purpose of the study. All of the errors in the essays and achievement tests have been identified and classified into various categorizations using suitable statistical tools.
The results of the study show that Iraqi medical students face difficulties in using
morphosyntactic elements in general, but they face fewer difficulties in recognizing
morphosyntactic elements than producing them. However, human medical students prove to face less difficulties in recognizing and producing morphosyntactic elements than veterinary medical students. Moreover, there are some kinds of variations between human and veterinary medicine students at the level of difficulties in using morphosyntactic elements and even in using one morphosyntactic element from another. The most problematic morphosyntactic elements for human medical students are gerund, future perfect, discourse organization & word order among other (25) selected morphosyntactic elements in the study. Meanwhile, discourse organization & word order, could have p.p, gerund are the most problematic morphosyntactic elements for veterinary medical students among other (25) selected morphosyntactic elements.
Analysis of the medical students’ written corpora using pos tagging show that human medical students commit errors mainly in base verb, wh pronoun, 3rd person participle, adverb, noun pl, number, conjunction, adjective, noun, pronoun, past tense verb, etc. On the other hand, veterinary students commit more errors in wh pronouns, base verb, noun pl, pronoun, number, conjunction, past tense verb, nouns, adverb, adjective, 3rd person participle, etc. The results have also shown that both groups of medical students have not considerably developed their skills in using morphosyntactic elements in writing with some variations in favor of human medical students.
The study ends with some pedagogical implications to overcome the aforementioned
problematic morphosyntactic elements and for better writing performance. The findings
suggest that Iraqi medical students are not fully aware of how to use morphosyntactic elements in IV recognition and in writing. Such an insight into language learning problems can be useful for teachers because it provides information on common trouble-spots in language learning which can be used in the preparation of more effective teaching materials for medical students.
This paper describes the process of design and compilation of the Primary Education Learners’ English Corpus (PELEC), a learner corpus which includes written (14,577 words) and spoken materials (47,032 words) from Primary Education learners in the Autonomous Community of Cantabria. It is composed of data from a total of 252 students in the fourth and sixth grade of Primary Education (aged 9–10 and 11–12, respectively) who were studying in five different state schools which followed either a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) approach.
The aim of the case study reported in this chapter is to examine the potential influence of the mother tongue on learners' production of both correct and incorrect multi-word units that are typically used to fulfil an important rhetorical function, namely exemplification, in academic writing. The phraseological patterns of five exemplifying lexical items are analyzed in five sub-corpora of the International Corpus of Learner English. These patterns are extracted from Paquot's (2007) productively-oriented academic word list and include the two fixed conjuncts for example and for instance, the noun example and the verbs illustrate and exemplify. The analysis aims to distinguish between aspects of phraseological use characteristic of learners from one mother tongue background (and therefore probably Ll-dependent) from phraseological patterns shared by most learner populations (and hence more likely to be developmental or teaching-induced). Results suggest that there are two different types of transfer of Ll multi-word units: the first type applies to word-like units and the second to less salient multi-word units. The study also indicates that transfer of form often seems to go together with transfer of frequency and register.
Over the last twenty years, phraseology has become a major field of pure and applied research in Western European and North American linguistics. This book is made up of authoritative contributions from leading specialists who examine the increasingly crucial role played by ready-made word-combinations in language acquisition and adult language use. After a wide-ranging introduction by the editor, the book introduces the main theoretical approaches, analyses the corpus data and phrase typology, and finally considers the application of phraseology to associated disciplines including lexicography, language learning, stylistics, and computational analysis. This book is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the subject to be published in English. Series Information Series ISBN: 0-19-961811-9 Series Editors: Richard W. Bailey, Noel Osselton, and Gabriele Stein; Oxford Studies in Lexicography and Lexicology provides a forum for the publication of substantial scholarly works on all issues of interest to lexicographers, lexicologists, and dictionary users. It is concerned with the theory and history of lexicography, lexicological theory, and related topics such as terminology, and computer applications in lexicography. It focuses attention too on the purposes for which dictionaries are compiled, on their uses, and on their reception and role in society today and in the past.
This article presents a selective review of the work carried out recently in second language acquisition (SLA) research which makes use of oral learner corpora and computer technologies. In the first part, the reasons why the field of SLA needs corpora for addressing current theoretical issues are briefly reviewed. In the second part, recent literature on corpora and SLA is presented, as well as corpora currently available. The final part of the article demonstrates the way in which computerized methodologies can be used, by presenting a case study of a project whose aim was to construct a database of French Learner Oral Corpora, and by illustrating how the CHILDES tools have assisted in addressing a specific research agenda.
Research results over the past decades have consistently demonstrated that a key reason why many second language learners fail--while some learners do better with less effort--lies in various learner attributes such as personality traits, motivation, or language aptitude. In psychology, these attributes have traditionally been called "individual differences." The scope of individual learner differences is broad--ranging from creativity to learner styles and anxiety--yet there is no current, comprehensive, and unified volume that provides an overview of the considerable amount of research conducted on various language learner differences, until now.
Linguistic Informatics is a research field named by the Center of Excellence (COE) Program: Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics (UBLI), which aims to systematically integrate studies in computer science, linguistics, and language education. The first part of this volume contains three lectures on spoken language analysis and corpus linguistics delivered at the Second International Conference on Linguistic Informatics held on December 10, 2005. The nine contributions in the second part come from the Collaboration Workshop on spoken language corpora between UBLI and C-ORAL-ROM, a consortium researching the spoken Romance languages. In the third part, four studies representative of Linguistic Informatics are presented. These studies deal with (1) Corpus-based analysis of linguistic usages, (2) Typological study of different languages, (3) Effective integration of e-learning and task-based face-to-face teaching and (4) Fosterage of language education researchers with expertise in the field of Linguistic Informatics.
Although acquisition criteria are a fundamental issue for SLA research, they have not always been adequately defined or elaborated in the literature. This article critically scrutinizes one such criterion, the emergence criterion, proposing an explicit, operational definition. After discussing emergence as a theoretical construct, the article addresses several points involved in its operationalization. These points concern all stages of a research project, from data collection to data organization and analysis. A concrete example is provided, leading to the formulation of an emergence criterion for the acquisition of two grammatical structures of Italian as a second language. Issues of reliability and validity are also discussed, providing indications for future research.
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