Tracking Learning: Using Corpus Linguistics to Assess Language Development
1. Tracking Learning: Using Corpus Linguistics to Assess Language Development James Lantolf Steve Thorne CALPER Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research The Pennsylvania State University
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8. ITA Project Describing, assessing, and developing academic discourse with international teaching assistants Steve Thorne Jonathan Reinhardt Paula Golombek
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20. MP use by NSs and learners (absolute numbers) 80 89 NSs 1 22 Post-Int. W4 6 65 Total Post-Interv. 3 27 Interv. W3 0 6 Interv. W2 2 7 Interv. W1 0 3 Pre-Interv. (4 weeks) Learners: Inaccurate use Learners: Accurate use Stages
All of these accounts of IL developmental trajectories reflect the underlying process of restructuring and provide a challenge for current corpus analytic techniques.
Yet, today so much of our learning is technology-mediated: email, chat, forum discussions, essays, voice-message boards, etc. that collecting much of the language students generate in instructional settings.
To use only corpus for assessing IL development all naturally-occurring language use must be captured and added to the corpus. Even in the most Orwellian of worlds, this is not a possibility. In other words, the weakness of CBA lies in the inability to collect an exhaustive sample of a learner’s language. Therefore, it would be unwise to declare a learner deficient in some aspect of the language just because the structure/function/etc. was not present in the corpus. With “testing” a very different limitation is encountered: is the language elicited truly representative of the learner’s ability? Therefore, the two approaches to assessment are very complementary. If