Category: applied linguistics

EGP: investigating patterns of learner grammar development AAAL 2018 Chicago

 

The English Grammar Profile: investigating patterns of learner grammar development

Anne O´Keeffe, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick – 

Geraldine Mark, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick – 

Pascual Pérez-Paredes, University of Cambridge

Check out our handout here.

Weblinks

The CEFR: http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/cefr/

The English Grammar Profile: http://www.englishprofile.org/english-grammar-profile/egp-online

Cambridge Learner Corpus: https://www.sketchengine.co.uk/cambridge-learner-corpus/

Sketch Engine universal POS tags https://www.sketchengine.co.uk/universal-pos-tags/

 

References

Ellis, N. C. (2003). ‘Constructions, chunking, and connectionism: The emergence of second language structure’. In C. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 33–68). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Ellis, N. C. (2012). “Formulaic language and second language acquisition: Zipf and the phrasal teddy bear”. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 32, 17-44.

Simpson-Vlach, R., & Ellis, N. C. (2010). An Academic Formulas List (AFL). Applied Linguistics, 31, 487–512.

Ellis, N. C., Römer, U. & O’Donnell, M. B. (2016). Usage-based Approaches to Language Acquisition and Processing: Cognitive and Corpus Investigations of Construction Grammar. Language Learning Monograph Series. Wiley-Blackwell.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2006).  “The emergence of complexity,  fluency, and accuracy in the oral and written production of  five Chinese learners of English”. Applied Linguistics, 27(4), 590–619.

Milton, J., & Meara, P. (1995). “How periods abroad affect vocabulary growth in a foreign language”. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics, (107–08), 17–34.

O’Keeffe, A., & Mark, G. (2017). “The English Grammar Profile of learner competence: Methodology and key findings”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(4), 457-489. https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/ijcl.14086.oke/fulltext

Römer, U., O’Donnell, M. B., & Ellis, N. C. (2014). “Second language learner knowledge of verb–argument constructions: Effects of language transfer and typology”. The Modern Language Journal, 98(4), 952-975.

Thewissen, J. (2013). “Capturing L2 accuracy developmental patterns: Insights from an error-tagged learner corpus”. The Modern Language Journal, 97(S1), 77–101.

#CFP #deadline extended edited book focusing on use of corpora for data-driven learning with young learners

 

Call for chapters for an edited book focusing on the use of corpora for data-driven learning (DDL, Johns, 1991) with young (i.e. pre-tertiary) learners.

DDL, despite being a feature of corpora and language learning research for some time, has really taken off as a viable methodological approach in the last decade due to innovations in corpus query interfaces, data visualisation, open access and improved internet access/speed. However, for a number of reasons including access, resources and difficulties in convincing those outside academia of the value of DDL, the majority of studies on DDL are conducted with tertiary or adult learners, leaving DDL for younger learners (those in pre-school, primary, or secondary education) as a relatively underexplored area in the literature.

With this in mind, chapter proposals are invited that explore the use of DDL with younger learners. Studies dealing with DDL for first or second language acquisition, genre and register learning/teaching and DDL for the teaching/learning of subjects other than languages are particularly welcome. The corpora involved in any of these studies can be spoken, written or multimodal. Chapters may be empirical studies of corpus use and its effects on learning, studies that explore the perceptions of corpus use by younger learners/teachers of younger learners, or studies that make a novel contribution to theory or methodology, such as new software or corpora that deal specifically with younger learners, and new approaches in training teachers / students of younger learners in DDL techniques.

Final chapters will be approximately 6000-7500 words. Chapter proposals of 400-500 words are due mid April, 2018. The edited volume is to be published by Routledge in 2019, part of the Taylor and Francis publishing group.

Please feel free to signal your interest or discuss your ideas by contacting the editor at p.cros@uq.edu.au.

Acceptance notification in April, with final submissions due December 2018/January 2019.

Please contact:

Dr. Peter Crosthwaite, Ph.D., FHEA
Lecturer, School of Languages and Cultures,
University of Queensland

Día mundial de la lengua madre: un par de recursos de interés

 

Naciones Unidas celebra hoy, 21 de febrero, el día mundial de la lengua madre (o las lenguas madres, habría que matizar). Naciones Unidas ha elegido este año 2018 el tema “Linguistic diversity and multilingualism: keystones of sustainability and peace”.

Durante 20 años, esta organización viene celebrando el papel central que nuestra lengua madre, la lengua o las lenguas madre en la aprendimos a comunicarnos con nuestros padres y con la(s) que empezamos a socializar,juega en la configuración de nuestra personalidad, de nuestro yo. Nuestra lengua madre (nuestra L1) nos da las herramientas necesarias para entender quiénes somos y encontrar sentido al mundo que nos rodea.

En un mundo cada más interconectado, nuestra L1 interacciona con otras lenguas que hemos adquirido o aprendido a lo largo de nuestra vida, bien en la escuela, bien en nuestro desempeño profesional, facilitando, en general, el aprendizaje de nuevas lenguas. Queda como cosa del pasado la visión negativa de la interferencia de la L1 en el aprendizaje de la(s) L2 tan en boga en los años 60 del siglo pasado.

Comparto aqui un par de recursos estupendos en este día.

El primero de ellos es un podcast elaborado en el marco del proyecto Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS), liderado por la Universidad de Cambridge. En este podcast, 6 estudiantes de 15 años en Parkside Community College, Cambridge, comparten sus ideas y opiniones sobre el uso que hacen de las diversas lenguas que hablan y cómo contribuyen al desarrollo de sus identidades individuales.

El segundo recurso es un kit para el fomento del multilingüismo creado por la UNESCO en 2016:
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002462/246278e.pdf

Co-authorship and productivity: insights from Parish et al. (2018)

The following is a selection of quotes from the following paper:

Parish AJ, Boyack KW, Ioannidis JPA (2018) Dynamics of co-authorship and productivity across different fields of scientific research. PLoS ONE 13(1): e0189742. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189742

You can find here something I wrote co-authorship in the area of applied linguistics where I call for a re-evaluation of collaboration in this area.

Collaboration is now seen as essential to progress in scientific research, and over the past several decades large-scale collaborative projects have become increasingly frequent in fields as diverse as medicine, genetics, and high-energy physics. Although these large collaborations have received more media attention, collaboration on a smaller scale is also important for scientific productivity.

The average number of co-authors per paper published by individual scientists has steadily increased in all fields over the past century. The possible effect of collaboration on improving scientific efficiency and productivity is particularly appealing.

Increased collaboration has long been found to be associated with increased scientific productivity using individual researchers as the unit of study. Collaboration is also frequently mentioned as an important factor in scientists’ own reflections on their success.

A researcher’s productivity may also shape their future role in networks of co-authors, with greater scientific success and exposure allowing the researcher more opportunities to collaborate.

Highly collaborative authors also seem to cite more recently published articles and to re-cite (citing the same references in multiple papers) less frequently, and thus may dwell closer to and push the frontiers of research. International collaboration in particular seems to be strongly related to productivity, as measured by total publications.

Different scientific fields to possess distinguishing network characteristics, including average number of collaborators per author.

In one study of 36,211 Italian scientists, Abramo et al found that across scientific fields women have a slightly higher tendency to engage in collaboration, as measured by the fraction of publications resulting from collaboration.

Within biology, earth sciences, and social sciences, there is not a significant relationship between R and h-index in 2015. Additionally, the association is strongest for physicists. This particularly strong association makes sense given the growing number of large, high impact, intensely collaborative projects in experimental physics.

Corpus linguistics & vocabulary learning

 

clandvocab

Recently, one of my students asked for some pointers in corpus linguistics and vocabulary learning. Here´s my top 5 impromptu list.

Sinclair, J. (2003). Reading concordances. An introduction. Harlow: Longman.

This is a great resource to fully understand the implications of using concordances to derive (linguistic) meaning.

Leńko-Szymańska, A. (2015). The English Vocabulary Profile as a benchmark for assigning levels to learner corpus data. Learner corpora in language testing and assessment, 115-140.

Interesting research that discusses the use of Cambridge Vocabulary Profile to sort ICCI learners into levels.

Schmitt, N., Cobb, T., Horst, M., & Schmitt, D. (2017). How much vocabulary is needed to use English? Replication of Van Zeeland & Schmitt (2012), Nation, (2006), and Cobb (2007). Language Teaching, 50(2), 212–226.

Excellent paper that makes use of corpus linguistics research methods to assess how much vocabulary do learners need to use English.

Schmitt, N. (2014). Size and depth of vocabulary knowledge: What the research shows. Language Learning, 64, 4, 913–951.

Great paper that discusses the many sides of vocabulary knowledge. Great if you need a start for vocabulary research in language education.

Jones, M. & Durran, P. (2010) What can a corpus tell us about vocabulary teaching materials? The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics.

Hopefully, this chapter will help you bridge the gap between corpora as resources and language teaching. Very practical stuff. By the way, the whole Routledge Handbook of corpus linguistics is a superb resource.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott Thornbury´s webinar on case studies in SLA 17th Oct 2017

Message distributed by Anne O´Keeffe

If you, your students or your colleagues fancy listening in to a webinar by Scott Thornbury tomorrow, as part of our MA in Applied Linguistics programme, please feel free to log in and also feel free to pass this on.

Title: The SLA Hall of Fame – Case Studies in SLA
Speaker: Scott Thornbury
Date: Tuesday 17th Oct 2017
Time: 13.00 – 14:00 (Irish Standard Time)

Webinar link http://mic.adobeconnect.com/sla/ Log in as Guest by just typing you name.