A corpus linguistic analysis of turn-openings in spoken academic discourse: Understanding discursive specialisation

Recent corpus linguistic (CL) investigations of academic discourse (both written and spoken) have tended to use easily excisable lexical items and/or grammatical forms to determine what is ‘special’ about the language of academia, and to compare and contrast particular disciplines or subjects with each other. This study takes a different approach to characterising academic talk – beginning with position rather than item. It is predicated on the well-established tenet that a considerable amount of discursive activity occurs in the extremely elastic and highly charged openings of turns, a position in the discourse that is the nexus of textual and interpersonal obligation, risk and potential. It therefore presents the results of the systematic analysis of the openings of 13,337 turns taken by tutors and students in a range of common pedagogic encounters in the humanities and social sciences. A set of ‘core’ turn-openers is then identified so that further detailed contextualised analysis can be carried out, which includes comparison with a benchmark corpus of casual conversation. The results suggest that academic speakers start their turns with recognisably conversational items that show subtle, but regularised, discursive specialisations related to their reflexive relationship with the academic encounters in which they are uttered and which they help to create.

A Validation Study of the CEFR Levels of Phrasal Verbs in the English Vocabulary Profile

This article reports on a part of the development and validation project for the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP). The previous version of the EVP included 439 phrasal verbs as well as 4,666 individual word entries. Each of their meanings is ordered according to its CEFR level. The aims of the study are to identify the actual difficulty of each phrasal verb, to validate the tentative decision of the CEFR levels, and also to explore factors that explain the difficulties, by using textbook corpora. In order to carry out this research, we developed a phrasal verb test of 100 items, consisting of four A1 items, nineteen A2 items, forty B1 items and thirty-seven B2 items. Approximately 1,600 Japanese students took this test. We analysed the test data, using item response theory. The results of the test show that although the average difficulties of the phrasal verbs in each level were ordered according to the level prediction, the ranges of the difficulties in each level overlapped. The analysis of textbook corpora reveals that there is a complex relationship between the difficulty levels of phrasal verbs and their frequencies in the textbooks. We discuss its implications and possible improvements for the EVP.

Completing the English Vocabulary Profile: C1 and C2 vocabulary

The English Vocabulary Profile is an online vocabulary resource for teachers, teacher trainers, exam setters, materials writers and syllabus designers. It offers extensive information about the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels of words, phrases, phrasal verbs and idioms, and currently includes just under 7,000 headwords. This article reports on the trialling and validation phase of the A1−B2 levels of the resource, as well as outlining the research and completion of the C1 and C2 levels. The project has followed a ‘can-do’ rationale, focusing on what learners actually know rather than prescribing what they should know, and is underpinned by up-to-date corpus evidence, including the 50-million word Cambridge Learner Corpus and the 1.2-billion word Cambridge English Corpus of first language use. At C1 and C2 levels, the English Vocabulary Profile describes both General and Academic English, and the additional sources used to research this area of language learning are described in the article. Polysemous words are treated in depth and the project has sought to determine which meanings of these important words appear to be acquired first; new, less frequent meanings often continue to be learned across all six CEFR levels. Phrases form another substantial part of the resource and this aspect has been guided by expert research (see Martínez 2011).

What kind of interaction receives high and low ratings in Oral Proficiency Interviews?

Based on a Conversation Analysis (CA) of a corpus of Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI), the study asks what kind of interaction receives high and low ratings in OPIs. The discussion focuses on issues of interactional organisation, considering turn-taking, sequence, repair and topic development in relation to candidate scores. The study presents findings of two funded studies of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Speaking Test (IST), which is one part of IELTS, a major international English proficiency test.The article explains how interaction in the IST is organised in interactional terms and how this organisation generates opportunities to differentiate high- and low-scoring interaction. The study then lists the interactional characteristics of high-scoring and low-scoring tests, based on an inductive search through the database and analysis of the micro-interaction. Extracts are presented to support characterisations. Differences in score correlate to the following interactional differences in Parts 1 and 3 of the IST: ability to answer the question, engage with and develop a topic coherently, amount of trouble and repair, lexical choice, and identity construction. In Part 2 of the IST, length of turn may also be related to score.

Semi-automatic ESOL error annotation

Manual error annotation of learner corpora is time-consuming and error-prone, whereas existing automatic techniques cannot reliably detect and correct all types of error. This paper shows that the two methods can successfully complement each other: automatic detection and partial correction of trivial errors relieves the human annotator from the laborious task of incessantly marking up oft-committed mistakes and enables him or her to focus on errors which cannot or cannot yet be handled mechanically, thus enabling more consistent annotation with considerably less manual time and effort expended.

Spoken fluency revisited

An important priority for the English Profile programme is to incorporate empirical evidence of the spoken language into the Common European Framework (CEFR). At present, the CEFR descriptors relating to the spoken language include references to fluency and its development as the learner moves from one level to another. This article offers a critique of the monologic bias of much of our current approach to spoken fluency. Fluency undoubtedly involves a degree of automaticity and the ability quickly to retrieve ready-made chunks of language. However, fluency also involves the ability to create flow and smoothness across turn-boundaries and can be seen as an interactive phenomenon in discourse. The article offers corpus evidence for the notion of confluence, that is the joint production of flow by more than one speaker, focusing in particular on turn-openings and closings. It considers the implications of an interactive view of fluency for pedagogy, assessment and in the broader social context.

Requirements for Reference Level Descriptions for English

The founding purpose of the English Profile Programme is to answer the Council of Europe's (2005) call for a set of Reference Level Descriptions (RLDs) for English linked to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The Council of Europe has issued guidelines setting out broad parameters for RLD development. This paper discusses how RLD might be developed for English in relation to the aims of the CEFR, incorporating consideration of critical voices, reports on the experiences of users of the CEFR and a review of currently operational RLDs for English: the Threshold series. On the basis of these sources, recommendations are made for the ongoing development of the English Profile Programme.

Criterial Features in Learner Corpora: Theory and Illustrations

One of the major goals of the Cambridge English Profile Programme is to identify ‘criterial features’ for each of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) proficiency levels as they apply to English, and to assess the impact of different first languages on these features (through ‘transfer’ effects). The present paper defines what is meant by criterial features and proposes an initial taxonomy of four types. Numerous illustrations are given from our collaborative research to date on the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The benefits and challenges posed by these features for corpus linguistics and for theories of second language acquisition are briefly outlined, as are the benefits and challenges for language assessment practices and for publishing ventures that make use of them as supplements to the current CEFR descriptors.

Report on the English Profile network seminar series 2010

The English Profile workshop and seminar sessions held in Cambridge in February 2010 aimed to update English Profile network members on the accomplishments of the programme to date and to look forward to a strong year of progress ahead. The author addressed the opening and closing sessions and provides an overview of the meeting.

A1–B2 vocabulary: insights and issues arising from the English Profile Wordlists project

The English Profile Wordlists provide a web resource showing the most common words and phrases in use by learners of English. Designed for use by language professionals from teacher trainers to examination writers, and with input from contributors and reviewers from around the world, the Wordlists document learner vocabulary through corpus-informed research. Vocabulary is graded according to the four Basic and Independent User levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (levels A1–B2) and is selected following a ‘can-do’ rationale – focussing on what learners do know rather than on what they should know. Preview versions of the British and American English Wordlists are available through public preview, offering detailed search functionality. There are further development opportunities to extend the Wordlists for young learners and for Business English, as well as to cover vocabulary at the C levels.