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The Santiago University Learner of English Corpus (SULEC) |
SULEC DATA
This is a monitor corpus, tha is, it is being expanded all the time as new data are being collected and computerised all the time. Our final aim is to assemble 1.000.000 words as this could be regarded as a fairly representative sample of Spanish learners of English. Foir the time being, secondary and university students are participating in the project although we are also interested in incorporating primary school pupils. Up to now (March 2004) 400,000 words of written and spoken English have been collected in equal proportions of the two media of expression. Furthermore, two levels of linguistic competence (intermediate and advanced are represented).
For
the written subcorpus, only compositions have been used as data gathering
instruments. Students have been asked to write a 500 word composition about one
of the topics given. As before the subjects of the compositions have varied
from university to secondary school students to suit learners’ interests. Here
is a list of the topics selected for each group of students:
Composition topics for intermediate students
§
Fame
Academy. What do you think about it?
Composition
topics for advanced students
§
Most
university degrees are theoretical and do not prepare students for the real
world. They are therefore of very little value.
§
All
armies should consist entirely of professional soldiers. There is no value in a
system of military service.
§
In
the words of the old song, Money is the root of all evil.
§
Do
you think the marriage of persons of the same sex should be allowed?
Oral
data are being collected through three main instruments: personal interviews,
oral presentations, oral exams in the format of interviews, and description of
picture-based story tasks. A detailed explanation of each of them is presented
in the pages that follow.
Interviews
Semistructured interviews are being used. This
means that the interviewers, who will be members or collaborators of the
research team and who will have been specifically trained for this task, will
have an interview outline in front of them; this will be quite flexible so as
not to condition the informant excessively. It should be made clear that we are
in this case more interested in the elicitation and assembling of data than in
the actual contents of it. The learner will answer a series of questions
concerning their hobbies, likes and dislikes, preferences, personal beliefs
about the process of second language learning, plans for the future and daily
routines and habits. All the interviews will be audiorecorded and later
transcribed for the corpus purposes.
A
small sample of the modules used for this interview is shown below. It is
important to mention that some of the modules (1 to 3) are common to both
university and secondary school students whereas some others are specific for
each individual group of students, modules 4 to 8 for college students, and module
9 for secondary school pupils. This had to be done in this way to accommodate
to the interests of the two subject groups.
Module 1: Personal background.- Sample
questions:
How old are you?, What language do you normally
speak at home and in your daily life?, Apart from English, can you speak any
other foreign language?, When did you start learning English?, How important is
English for you? What do you think about being able to speak
different languages?
Module 2: Leisure.- Sample questions: What countries have you been to?, What do
you like to do when you are on holiday?, For example, what did you do last
summer?, Do you like going out?, Who do you normally go out with?, What
do you do when you want to relax?
Module 3: Food.- Sample questions:
Do you
like vegetarian food?, What is your favourite dish,? Do you like cooking?, Do
you ever cook for others?, What kind of foods do you cook?, What is your
speciality? , Do you like eating out?, Do you
know something about food in other countries? Could you say what?, Have
you ever been to a Chinese/Italian/Greek restaurant?, How was your experience?
Module 4: Friends.- Sample questions (for university students only):
Is it easy to make new friends in pubs and
discos in Santiago?, Do you keep in touch with your old friends from college?,
Who do you live with?, Do you share a flat with other students or do you live
on your own?, What are the advantages and disadvantages
you find both in sharing a flat with other students and in living on your own?
Module 5: Work prospects. Sample questions
(for university students only):
What will you do when you complete your course
and obtain your degree?, Are you optimistic about your chances to find a job?,
Would you like to work abroad?, What kind of job would you like to do?
Module 6: School vs. university (for
university students only). Sample questions: Is university life very different from school life?, Is this what you
expected?, How did you get on with your teachers and your classmates at school?
Module 7: Santiago vs. home town (for
university students only). Sample questions: Do you go home at the weekends or do you prefer to stay in Santiago?,
What kind of things can you do in your home town at the weekend?, What is the
best thing of going home?, What are
the main differences between living with your parents and family and living far
from them?
Module 8: Halls of residence (for university
students only).- Sample questions: Do you
live in any of the university halls of residence? Which one?, What kinds of
norms do they have there?, Can you come home very late?, Can you have parties?,
What are the pros and cons of Halls of
Residence?
Module 9: University (for secondary students
only).- Sample questions: What is your
favourite subject?, Do you intend to go to university?, What would you like to
study?, Will you live on your own, or will you share a flat with friends? In what ways do you think University will be
different from your present school?
Oral presentations
Apart from the interviews just mentioned, some
oral presentations and oral tasks carried out in two of the courses of the
English Philology degree curriculum at our university will also be
audiorecorded and even in some cases videorecorded. Material from final oral
exams in the different years will also be assembled.
Activities
completed by students in two specific courses have been selected. These courses
are “Técnicas de expresión oral”, that is to say, Oral Production or Expression
Techniques (optional course of the first cycle of the University of Santiago English
Philology curriculum) and “Perspectivas metodológicas del inglés”, that is,
English Methodology (optional course of the second cycle).
In
the case of the first course, that is, Oral Expression Techniques, attention
will be paid to information-gap activities and role-plays. In the
information-gap activities students, generally in pairs, have to solve a
problem or complete a task through the exchange of information. Role-plays on
their part are short sketches or simulations students have to interpret
adopting the role of hypothetical characters.
As
regards the course on English methodology, we will concentrate on those oral
tasks in which a small group of students have to present an activity to the
rest of the members of the class. This activity, given the areas covered in the
course, is usually related to the field of language teaching. It could be the
presentation of a lesson plan, or something more specific such as the
explanation of a language teaching game or a problem-solving activity, the pedagogical
exploitation of a song or video document. As before, all these presentations
are audiorecorded and even videorecorded since students are asked to watch
themselves after the presentation to evaluate their performance and learn from
their practice. As mentioned above, data will also be taken from students’
final oral exams in the different university years. These exams normally adopt
the format of an interview. Students usually have to prepare in advance three
topics from a given list and then the examiners, a native and a non-native
teacher, select one and ask questions about it. These exams are generally done
in pairs. On some occasions presentations are substituted by the description of
pictures, photographs or comics.
In
order to find a balance with the secondary school level, it is intended to
record similar comparable presentations with students of first and second year
“Bachillerato”.
Description of picture-based story tasks
The description of the picture-based story
tasks is mainly thought out for the survey on the communication strategies (CS)
used by our students when they are overwhelmed by difficulties in their oral
communication. Two versions of the same story based on different pictures
have been created. Each version shows
some similarities and differences with the other one. The students in pairs
will then have to identify the divergences between their stories without
looking at each other’s pictures, simply by asking, answering questions and
exchanging information. This means that each of the students will have to
describe the story very carefully and in close detail so they can spot the
existing differences.
The
following procedures are observed in this case so that the data recorded can
serve the purpose of analysing the use of CS by our learners:
·
The
completion of the task by the students will be audio and video recorded. On
this occasion videorecording will be completely necessary since the non-verbal
elements and some paralinguistic features such as gestures, mime, face expression
and body language play an important role in this domain. When suffering a
memory failure or confronting a lexical and/or grammatical deficit, the second
language student often resorts to a non-verbal expression to support their
message and, even very frequently, to a substitute means of expression.
·
In
addition to the that, the task will be supplemented by a second version in
the learner’s L1 (Galician or
Spanish) and by a retrospective interview about the development of the task
itself. The description of the story in the learner’s L1 will serve to
determine the communicative function of it while through the retrospective
interview the researcher will try to obtain information to identify the
different CS and investigate up to what extent students are aware of their
linguistic deficiencies when communicating in English. It will also be the time
to examine the strategies or resources students use to overcome those
deficiencies and communicate successfully in the foreign language.