Sylvie Cock

The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) contains informal interviews with intermediate to advanced level learners of English as a foreign language. The interviews follow the same set pattern and are made up of three main tasks: a personal narrative based on a set topic (an experience that taught them a lesson, a country that impressed them, or a film or play they liked/disliked), a free discussion mainly about university life, hobbies, foreign travel or plans for the future and a picture description. Although the interviews are all conducted in English, 'foreign' words, i.e. words from other languages than English, sometimes feature in both the interviewers' and the learner interviewees' contributions. Foreign words have been specially marked up in the LINDSEI corpus ( WORD(S) ich liebe dich ' - LINDSEI_DU , 'in Spanish they they call it chela ' - LINDSEI_SP). The analysis shows that not all the foreign words investigated could actually be labelled as 'communication strategies' defined as ‘systematic technique[s] employed by a speaker to express his meaning when faced with some difficulty’ (Corder 1981: 103). Pragmatic/discourse bridges are a case in point as their use is largely spontaneous and unintentional (e.g. 'because we are (er) two: enfin we we are three: children in my family and (er) two of us . are studying here so (er)' LINDSEI_FR). This paper sets out to turn a 'fluency' spotlight on the use of foreign words in LINDSEI_Dutch, LINDSEI_French, LINDSEI_German and LINDSEI_Italian. The focus is on these four subcorpora as foreign words occur in at least three quarters of the interviews included in the components and are thus fairly evenly distributed. It is noteworthy that the interviewers in the subcorpora on the LINDSEI CD-ROM either share the learners' L1 (e.g. LINDSEI_Dutch and LINDSEI_Italian) or are native speakers of English with at least some knowledge of the learners' L1 (e.g. LINDSEI_French and LINDSEI_German), which might arguably have some impact on the successful use of foreign words in the interaction (cf. Nacey and Graedler above). The aim is to examine whether or not and to what extent the foreign words used as lexical bridges, cultural/institutional bridges and pragmatic/discourse bridges could be labelled as (dis)fluency devices in the informal interviews with EFL learners under investigation. In other words, can the foreign words under study be seen to contribute (or not) to the smooth flow of the interviews? Central to the notion of fluency used here are real-time pressure/processing and interaction management constraints (Rühlemann 2006). The various elements that typically co-occur with each of the three types of bridges are highlighted (e.g. 'I don't know how you say it in English', 'sort of/kind of', filled and unfilled pauses tend to co-occur with lexical bridges) as are turn positions and interviewers' reactions. The notion of fluency in interaction and fluent meaning co-construction (André & Tyne 2012) is also explored in the specific context of informal interviews, which do not share two of Clark’s (1996) typical features of face-to-face conversation, namely self-determination (in informal interviews the turn-taking system is pre-specified, Lazareton 1992) and self-expression (the interviewer has the right and obligation to ask questions and the interviewee has the obligation to answer these questions and to keep talking, Fiksdal 1990). References André, V. & Tyne, H. (2012) Compétence sociolinguistique et dysfluence en L2 In Kamber, A. & Skuipen-Dekens (eds) Recherches récentes en FLE. Bern: Peter Lang, 21-46. Clark, H. H. (1996) Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corder, S. P. (1981) Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Cock, S. (2015) An exploration of the use of foreign words in interviews with EFL learners: a(n) (effective) communication strategy? Paper presented at LCR 2015, Nijmegen September 2015. Fiksdal, S. (1990) The Right Time and Pace: A Microanalysis of Cross-cultural Gatekeeping Interviews. New Jersey: Ablex Norwood. Gilquin, G., De Cock, S. & Granger, S. (eds) (2010) The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage. Handbook and CD-ROM. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain. Lazaraton, A. (1992) The Structural Organization of a language Interview: A Conversation Analytic Perspective. System 20/3, 373-386. Nacey, S. & Graedler, A.-L. (2013) Communication strategies used by Norwegian students of English. In Granger, S., Gilquin, G. and Meunier, F. (eds) Twenty Years of Learner Corpus Research: Looking Back, Moving Ahead. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 345-356. Rühlemann, C. (2006) Coming to terms with conversational grammar: ‘Dislocation’ and ‘dysfluency’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11 (4), 385–409. Tarone, E. (2005) Speaking in a second language. In Hinkel, F. (ed.) Handbook of Research in Second…

This thesis explores the recurrent sequences of more than two single words that native speakers of English and advanced EFL learners tend to use as their routinized building blocks or as their preferred ways of saying things in both spoken and written discourse. More specifically, the study sets out to test the validity of the largely unproven hypothesis put forward by Kjellmer (1991: 124), according to which learners' "building material is individual bricks rather than prefabricated sections." This hypothesis is only tested in part as the focus is on continuous (i.e. uninterrupted) recurrent sequences of words in advanced French-speaking EFL learner productions. The recurrent aspect of native speakers' and learners' phrasicon is examined on the basis of automatically extracted sequences of words that recur in two comparable computerized corpora of native speaker (NS) and learner speech (i.e. LOCNEC and LINDSEI respectively) and in two comparable corpora of NS and learner writing (i.e. LOCNESS and ICLE respectively). On a methodological level, the study shows how this automatic corpus-driven discovery procedure lends itself exceptionally well to bringing out the workings of recurrence in NS and learner speech and writing. The results yielded by the automatic extraction of recurrent sequences of words are a useful and powerful starting point for studies of both native speakers' and learners' preferred ways of putting things. On a descriptive level, the corpus-driven method and the framework of investigation used (based on Altenberg 1998) have made it possible to uncover and describe the all-pervasiveness and the rich structural and functional diversity of recurrent sequences of words in NS and learner speech and writing. The results suggest that, when it comes to the recurrent aspect of the phrasicon, Kjellmer's assumption is too simplistic. It is true that the learners in the corpora used resort to individual bricks to a certain extent (especially in speech), but more importantly perhaps, they appear to make a somewhat misguided use of recurrent 'prefabricated sections'. While they make highly repeated use of a series of prefabs in academic writing, a genre where diversity should prevail, they can be seen to underuse recurrent prefabs in speech. Beyond these quantitative considerations, attempting to capture the nature of the learner phrasicon makes it possible to underline some essential and significant differences between NS and learner prefabs. In speech, the learners are lacking in recurrent prefabricated ways of interacting and building rapport with their interlocutors and of toning down and weaving the right amount of imprecision and vagueness into their messages or in ways of expressing attitudinal stance in a native-like manner. In writing, the learners are lacking in a variety of prefabricated ways of introducing the topics of discussion, of organizing and developing their argumentation and of qualifying their opinions. The thesis stresses the importance of good descriptions of native speaker and learner recurrent sequences of words and prefabs in general for Second Language Acquisition and English Language Teaching. The pedagogical implications of the study are highlighted and avenues for future research are outlined.

The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) contains informal interviews with intermediate to advanced level learners of English as a foreign language. The interviews follow the same set pattern and are made up of three main tasks: a personal narrative based on a set topic (an experience that taught them a lesson, a country that impressed them, or a film or play they liked/ disliked), a free discussion mainly about university life, hobbies, foreign travel or plans for the future and a picture description. Although the interviews are all conducted in English, 'foreign' words ('FWs'), i.e. words from other languages than English, sometimes feature in the spoken productions. Foreign words have been specially marked up in the LINDSEI corpus (<foreign> WORD(S) </foreign) and can therefore be retrieved automatically using WordSmith Tools for example. A 2015 study (Author) explored the use of foreign words and their functions in fiv...

The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) contains informal interviews with intermediate to advanced level learners of English as a foreign language. However informal these interviews may be, they do not share two of Clark’s (1996) typical features of face-to-face conversation, namely self-determination and self-expression. While the free exchange of turns is a fundamental organising factor of conversations, in interviews the participants do not determine for themselves what actions to take when. Instead of being ‘locally managed’ as in conversations (Lazaraton 1992), the turn-taking system is pre-specified: interviews are organised according to a question-answer format. Besides taking actions as themselves (Clarke’s self-expression) the participants in an interview also take actions as ‘interviewer’ or ‘interviewee’. As Fiksdal (1990) points out, the participants have rights and obligations as interviewer or interviewee: the interviewer has the ri...

Abstract In this paper, I set out to investigate what Lancashire (1996) calls' repetitive phrasal chunkiness', ie highly recurrent word combinations (HRWCs), in native speaker and advanced EFL learner spontaneous speech and formal essay writing on the basis of ...

This paper examines and compares quantity approximation in English and French business news reporting using two comparable 500,000-word corpora. The method used to identify quantity approximation is inductive and involves the scrutiny of concordances of numbers automatically retrieved from a part-of-speech tagged version of the corpora. The contrastive study of quantity expressions co-occurring with numbers reveals some similarities and differences between English and French when it comes to the company the approximators tend to keep and the semantic and grammatical categories they represent. The analysis shows that overall there is less approximation around numbers in the French corpus than in the English corpus.

The LINDSEI (Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage) project was launched in 1995, five years or so after the start of ICLE, the International Corpus of Learner English. LINDSEI was meant as ICLE’s talkative sister, a collection of spoken data produced by advanced learners of English as a foreign language. The collaboration with several universities internationally made it possible to include data from learners with a wide variety of mother tongue backgrounds. To date, eleven mother tongues are represented: Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish and Swedish. The data consist of transcribed informal interviews that took place in three stages: the learner talked for a few minutes about a topic which s/he had chosen among three and had had some time to think about, s/he then answered the interviewer’s questions about general topics such as hobbies or life at university, and finally s/he was asked to describe a series of four pictures making up a story. The interviews were transcribed orthographically (with some prosodic and phonetic information like pauses or syllable lengthening), following guidelines which were specifically designed for the project and which were standardised across the subcorpora to ensure perfect comparability of the data. The transcripts were specially marked up for overlapping speech, vocalizations and foreign words, as well as for the identity of the speaker (learner or interviewer) and the division between the three tasks (prepared topic, open discussion, picture description). Each interview is accompanied by a learner profile recording a number of learner and task variables such as the learner’s age, mother tongue and knowledge of other foreign languages, or the duration and length (in words) of the interview. The corpus will soon be released and in this demo, we would like to show a prototype of the search interface, which will allow users to compile their own tailor-made corpora on the basis of a set of predefined variables and extract useful statistics. The corpus thus compiled can then be imported into a concordancer such as Wordsmith Tools for further analysis. Using small case studies as illustrations, we will present the different functionalities of the tool and demonstrate how they can be put to good use to investigate spoken interlanguage – a field which is still largely unexplored in corpus linguistics, essentially because of a lack of available data. We will also show how the kinship between LINDSEI and ICLE makes it possible to compare the two corpora and hence investigate the relation between spoken and written interlanguage.

This paper reports on an investigation of attitudinal stance (Biber et al. 1999, Conrad and Biber 1999) in native and learner speech. Attitudinal stance conveys speaker' attitudes, likes or dislikes, or evaluations of events or personal experiences, for example. The focus of the study is on the adjectives that native speakers and advanced EFL learners use recurrently to express both positive and negative evaluation (Hunston and Sinclair 1999). The adjectives under investigation (e.g. good, great, nice, wonderful, bad, awful, terrible) fit into Biber et al.'s (1999) evaluative/emotive subcategory of descriptors. Native speakers' and learners' use of evaluative adjectives are analysed using the Louvain Corpus of Native English Conversation and the French, German and Chinese components of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage. The report concentrates on a number of findings from an analysis of the preferred syntactic and collocational patter...

Press releases represent a hybrid business genre, which combines an informational and a promotional communicative purpose. The objective of the study is to assess the extent to which this duality is reflected in the language used, and more particularly in the expression of stance, by comparing corporate press releases with another business genre that is essentially informational, namely business news reporting. The focus is on lexical bundles, as they have been found to be a major conveyor of attitudinal and epistemic stance. Relying on the pattern-matching approach to language, 3-word lexical bundles are extracted from a 1-million-word corpus of press releases (BeRel) and set against those found in a similar-sized corpus of business news (BeNews). An examination of the key bundles (keyword analysis) in each corpus reveals that the bundles that are distinctive to press releases differ significantly from those found in BeNews, particularly in the expression of modal, evaluative and p...

Monolingual learners' dictionaries (MLDs) are dictionaries that are specially designed to cater for the needs of foreign language learners and provide all the information in the learners' target language. They differ from general-purpose dictionaries (GPDs) in several ...

The highly polysemous and phraseological nature of high frequency words makes them a major stumbling block for both lexicographers and learners. This article seeks to investigate the lexicographic treatment of high frequency words through a detailed study of the verb make in five recent editions of monolingual learners' dictionaries (CALD 2003, COBUILD 2003, LDOCE 2003, MEDAL 2002 and OALD 2000). After a first section devoted to the nature of high frequency words and the difficulties they pose, sections 2 and 3 respectively focus on the semantic and phraseological treatment of the verb make in the five dictionaries. The article is rounded off by a series of suggestions for improvement and a plea for increased learner training in dictionary use.

This article reports on a pilot study into how corpus methods can be applied to the study of one type of phraseological unit, formulae, in native speaker and learner speech. Formulae, or formulaic expressions, are multi-word units performing a pragmatic and/or discourse-structuring ...