Lightnings of Intuition: A Protocol for University Students' Oral Discourse Appreciation

As a spin-off to the process of compilation of the Spanish component of the The Louvain International Database of Spoken Language Interlanguage (LINDSEI) corpus, advanced learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the University of Murcia have been given the chance to explore their own speaking output through a corpus-aided methodology. This paper presents a glimpse of the materials which have guided our students through the process of self-discovery of their own spoken discourse. Similarly, special attention is devoted to the leaning principles underlying our form-focused approach whose addressees are students of Lengua Inglesa III. Preliminary evidence in the form of face-to-face feedback about the reception of the protocol among the students who completed it suggests that form-focused attention facilitates noticing of often-unnoticed features of learner oral discourse

Stance nouns in COVID-19 related blog posts:A contrastive analysis of blog posts published in The Conversation in Spain and the UK

Research dissemination through academic blogs creates opportunities for writers to reach wider audiences. With COVID-19, public dissemination of research impacts daily practices, and national and international policies, and in countries like the UK and Spain, The Conversation publishes accessible COVID-19 themed research. Such academic blogs are important to the global academy, yet the role of authorial stance therein is notably under-investigated. This paper presents a corpus-based contrastive analysis of “stance nouns + that/de que” in a comparable corpus of English and Spanish COVID-19 themed academic blogs from The Conversation. The analysis identifies similarities and differences across languages that reflect how COVID-19 is framed in each language. For example, Spanish academics use Possibility and Factualness nouns when self-sourcing their stances with expanding strategies, while English academics use Argument and Idea nouns with external sources in contracting strategies. Overall, this paper adds to current linguistic knowledge on academic blogs and scientific communication surrounding COVID-19

Aprendizaje de idiomas asistido por dispositivos móviles: alcance, praxis y teoría

Mobile assisted language learning (MALL) research has been characterized by an overemphasis on technology, while the wide variety of approaches to the uses of mobiles has painted an atomized picture of L2 instruction. This paper discusses various conceptualizations of MALL that favour areas of language learning that are anchored on different theories of learning and language learning. Drawing on the seminal work by Traxler (2018, 2019), as well as on research that has examined self-directed uses, the use of apps and Augmented Reality (AR) in MALL, the authors contend that it is essential to shift our focus away from device-oriented pedagogies to more socially situated practices that take stock of new ecologies of language use. We contend that the research field is in search of a wider theoretical perspective in the context of SLA and language education that explores what we label here as socially contextualized MALL.  La investigación sobre el aprendizaje de idiomas asistido por dispositivos móviles (MALL) se ha caracterizado por un énfasis excesivo en los aspectos más íntimamente relacionados con la tecnología y la gran variedad de enfoques sobre los usos de los dispositivos móviles ha contribuido a generar una visión atomizada de la enseñanza de segundas lenguas. En este artículo se analizan diversas conceptualizaciones sobre MALL que, en diferente medida, favorecen áreas del aprendizaje de lenguas vinculadas a teorías sobre el aprendizaje y el aprendizaje de lenguas. Basándonos en las contribuciones de Traxler (2018, 2019), así como en la investigación que ha examinado el aprendizaje autodirigido, el uso de apps y la Realidad Aumentada (RA) en MALL, los autores sostienen que es esencial cambiar nuestro enfoque de pedagogías orientadas a los dispositivos a prácticas situadas en contextos sociales de uso, las cuales se encuentran mejor equipadas para acoger y explicar las nuevas ecologías sobre el uso del lenguaje. En este trabajo sostenemos que este ámbito de la investigación está en busca de una perspectiva teórica más amplia que explore lo que en este artículo hemos denominado MALL socialmente contextualizado

Patrones de Pensamiento Computacional y corpus lingüísticos: el aprendizaje de lenguas con datos lingüísticos

The language of pedagogic patterns is not only a vehicle for communication between individuals with different degrees of expertise but also a vehicle for interdisciplinary collaboration. In this paper, we use pedagogic patterns, pattern language and computational thinking in language learning. Language corpora are large databases of language that document native speakers’ real use of language while engaged in different communication events. In this paper, we seek to motivate and design a pedagogic pattern for the use of Data-driven-Learning (DDL) activities in the context of language teaching and inductive learning with language corpora. By accessing these resources, learners may tap into the type of knowledge and understanding of language uses that only L1 speakers have. The proposed pedagogic pattern facilitates the acquisition and dissemination of good practices that can serve as a reference for new applications. The storing and processing of these pedagogic patterns allows professionals and experts in teaching and instructional design to build well documented databases that can be of use in future pedagogic applications

The linguistic dimension of L2 interviews: A multidimensional analysis of native speaker language

This research profiles the L2 interviews from a variationist perspective by using native speaker data in order to gain insight into the characteristics of three different speaking tasks in the framework of the LINDSEI learner language corpus tradition: Personal Narrative Component, an Interaction Component and a Picture Description. This way, we set out to research one area of the assessment of proficiency that is usually neglected: that of the linguistic nature of the tasks used to assess general “proficiency” in a given language. Our corpus was part-of-speech (POS) tagged and analysed using Multidimensional Analysis (MDA). We found that the different speaking tasks determine the range of linguistic features that are more likely to be generated by the communicative potential of the task itself. This profiling is of interest in areas such as language assessment, where the interview is widely used to evaluate the speakers’ communicative competence, but also in the field of learner language research. Our research is an example of the possibilities which combined methodologies of learner language analysis can offer to both the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research community and the more general applied linguistics research field

A systematic review of the uses and spread of corpora and data-driven learning in CALL research during 2011–2015

This research uses the theoretical framework of CALL normalisation developed by Bax (2003) and Chambers and Bax (2006) to offer a systematic review (Gough et al., 2012) of the uses and spread of data-driven learning (DDL) and corpora in language learning and teaching across five major CALL-related journals during the 2011–2015 period. DDL research represented 4.2% of all published papers on CALL during this time frame. The main focus of research was found to be the use of concordancing and collocations when developing university students’ writing skills. Contrary to previous research, access to technology was not identified as an impeding factor for normalisation. Syllabus integration and a lack of contribution from language teachers other than researchers emerged as threats to the normalisation of corpora use. Further theorisation is needed if DDL and corpora are to expand their influence on mainstream second language education

Noun phrase complexity in young Spanish EFL learners’ writing Complementing syntactic complexity indices with corpus-driven analyses

The research reported in this article examines Noun Phrase (NP) syntactic complexity in the writing of Spanish EFL secondary school learners in Grades 7, 8, 11 and 12 in the International Corpus of Crosslinguistic Interlanguage. Two methods were combined: a manual parsing of NPs and an automatic analysis of NP indices using the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity (TAASSC). Our results revealed that it is in premodifying slots that syntactic complexity in NPs develops. We argue that two measures, (i) nouns and modifiers (a syntactic complexity index) and (ii) determiner + multiple premodification + head (a NP type obtained as a result of a corpus-driven analysis), can be used as indices of syntactic complexity in young Spanish EFL learner language development. Besides offering a learner-language-driven taxonomy of NP syntactic complexity, the paper underscores the strength of using combined methods in SLA research