Sessions

Lexical Phrases in a Longitudinal Learner Corpus

This presentation summarizes the findings of a research project tracing lexical phrases (n-grams used for metadiscoursal and signposting functions) used in learner academic writing over a two-year English for academic purposes program. It focuses on how the number, range and accuracy of lexical phrase use changed. Particular aspects of the methodology and curriculum that may have influenced these changes will be discussed as well as the implications of this study for future work.

Developing a Multimodal Learner Corpus

This pilot study looks at the extent learners’ L2 vocabulary affects lexical diversity across academic writing, academic presentation (written for speaking), and academic discussions. This was done by examining the relationship between students’ (n=46) L2 vocabulary size, as measured by Webb, Sasao, and Ballance’s (2017) updated vocabulary levels test (uVLT), and the lexical diversity of their texts over the three modes of production as measured by McCarthy’s (2005) measure of textual lexical diversity (MTLD).

A Multimodal, Longitudinal Corpus Project

This talk introduces a project to create a multimodal, longitudinal learner corpus to be made available to researchers both in and outside the creators’ university setting. The corpus design includes two years of longitudinal learner data from a university English language program including three modes of communication: discussion, presentation, and academic writing. This type of data can be used to conduct cross-modal studies, investigate longitudinal trends or, in combination with other corpora, contrastive interlanguage analysis.