Holding up one’s end of the conversation in spoken English

Abstract

This study investigates the use of lexical backchannels in the discourse of L2 English users sitting Trinity College London’s Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE). It is based on the Trinity Lancaster Corpus Sample and explores the language produced during the Discussion, Conversation and Interactive tasks of the language examinations by L2 English users from Chinese, Indian and Italian linguistic backgrounds, whose proficiency ranges from the B2 to C2 levels (i.e. high intermediate, advanced, expert) of the CEFR. The findings suggest that the L2 users with an Italian background and to a lesser extent those with a Chinese background often supported their examiners’ turns with items conveying uncertainty, while those with an Indian background with items of certainty. Furthermore, the L1 Chinese speakers used lexical backchannels the most, especially those expressing surprise or request for confirmation, while the speakers from India used them the least. Implications for the assessment of oral proficiency are discussed.

A multi-dimensional analysis of backchannels in L1 German, L1 Italian and L2 German

“…Chinese, Indian and Italian learners of English in language examination setting were found to differ in terms of backchannel frequency and lexical type (Castello and Gesuato;. Similarly, in informal interviews conducted in American English by four learners with different L1 backgrounds, the preferred backchannel functions were found to differ across learners (Shelley and Gonzalez, 2013).…”

Metadata design for the first electronic learner corpus of Romanian

“…Stormbom (2018) investigated differences in the use of epicene pronouns ("he", "he or she", and "they") among L1 English writers and L2 English writers with different L1 backgrounds (Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish), using the pronoun choice as indicator for the degree of non-sexist language use. Castello and Gesuato (2019) were interested in the variation of the use of lexical backchannels 4 (as signals of active listener-ship and discourse competence) in the oral discourse of L2 English learners from different L1 backgrounds.…”

Exploring Learners’ Backchannel Production in Complaint Sequences Across Proficiency Levels

“…The study demonstrates that although both pedagogical treatments seem to be effective, the explicit group outperformed the implicit group. More recently, Castello and Gesuato (2019) examine the role of backchannels in oral examinations from a cross-cultural perspective (Italian, Chinese, Indian). This study reports on the role of learners' linguistic background as regards the performance of backchannels and the impact on spoken assessment practices.…”