The Learner Corpora of Spoken English: What Has Been Done and What Should Be Done?

Abstract

The number of spoken learner corpora is smaller than that of written corpora; however, demand for spoken corpora has continuously increased. This study investigates the current state of spoken English-language learner corpora both in the world and in Korea, with a focus on their size, speakers, and genres. Based on this survey, the study discusses factors to consider when building and publishing a spoken learner corpus, especially with respect to the issues of conversation genre, proficiency level, and annotation.

The Use of English Pragmatic Markers by Learners of English from Different Linguacultural Backgrounds

“…All the participants were efl learners, and their first languages (L1s) were the official languages of their respective home countries; English was regarded as a foreign language for the participants who, despite having studied efl in their home countries, did not necessarily use it in daily communication (Yoon, 2020). All the participants had been studying efl at school for 11-14 years in accordance with the different education policies of their countries.…”

“…To apply cia2, learner corpora representing the efl that learners used in their efl communications were constructed for this study, as described above. efl communication refers to communications in which non-native English speakers used English as a foreign language to exchange information and to achieve mutual understanding (Gilquin, 2020;Yoon, 2020). The term "efl" was used instead of "interlanguage" in this study, as the term "interlanguage" implicitly refers to the language used by non-native speakers in comparison to native speakers, and our sole focus was on the efl communications produced by efl learners from different linguacultural backgrounds.…”