Spanish Learner Corpus Research by Alonso-Ramos Margarita;

Author:Alonso-Ramos, Margarita;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Published: 2016-12-01T10:32:29+00:00

Keywords

online training website

oral proficiency

proficiency levels

Spanish as a second language

corpus linguistics

subject pronouns

1.Introduction

The field of corpus linguistics has become increasingly valued as an area of language study in the past two decades, made possible with the use of computers and, consequently, online resources. With these options available to researchers, the field then witnessed a proliferation of computational tools, such as concordancers and annotation tools. A number of books and articles have been published that show how, for example, the use of concordances and corpora can lend statistical strength to hypotheses that are offered (e.g. Baker 2009), and analytical tools such as AntConc, a freeware toolkit, facilitate analysis by generating distribution plots and concordance lines. Indeed, time saved by using corpora for linguistic research is notable.

One issue in corpus linguistics is what defines a good corpus; in particular, we refer in this chapter to a corpus dedicated to matters of foreign (FL) and second language (L2) learning, such as the differences between learner proficiency levels. The website that contains this corpus is labeled Spanish Corpus Proficiency Level Training, or SPT, created at the University of Texas at Austin. Granger (2002: 8–10) names some characteristics that a computer corpus should demonstrate in order to be considered a true ‘corpus’ specifically for FL and L2: authenticity, FL and L2 varieties, textual data, explicit design criteria, a L2 acquisition (SLA)/FL purpose, and standardization and documentation. 1 A more elaborate discussion of them is as follows:

Authenticity: there are varying degrees of authenticity, since most learner data are elicited in some manner and not produced under ‘natural’ conditions.

Granger, however, considers ‘free’ written compositions as ‘natural’ since they represent writing that learners write what they want to do so. Thus the interpretation of ‘authenticity’ remains an open issue in the field.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.