Applied Linguistics

Partie Thewissen

Learner corpora

Electronic collections of (near-)natural data produced by foreign or second language (L2) learners and assembled according to explicit design criteria

Second Language Acquisition

Linguistic discipline which investigates how a second language is learned

Input Hypothesis (Monitor Model)

Acquisition takes place if the input is one level above the learners’ current stage of acquisition (n+1)

Affective Filter Hypothesis (Monitor Model)

Affective factors such as motivation, self-confidence, etc. impact SLA (it’s also about psychology)

Interlanguage (Selinker, 1972)

Transitional linguistic system developed by L2 learners that’s influenced by their native language but is distinct from both the native and target languages (“target language”)

Learner corpus (McEnery, 2006)

Collection of machine-readable authentic texts (including transcripts of spoken data) which is sampled to be representative of a particular language or language variety)

EFL

English as a Foreign Languages

ELF

English as a Lingua Franca, as the common language of communication

World Englishes

Indigenized varieties of English

Expanding circle (Kachru)

IFL, in countries where English has no special status and no historical link

Outer circle (Kachru)

Former colonies and countries where English has an official existence, acts as a secondary language and is used in some official spheres

Inner circle (Kachru)

Countries where English is the native language

Accentism

Discrimination, prejudice or unfair behaviour against people based on their accent or language use

Computer-aided error analysis (CEA)

Analyzing learner errors on the basis of learner corpus data; discipline that started at the end of the 1990s

Data collection (James, 1998)

Getting the errors to analyse

“Broad trawl” method

Casting one’s net to catch all and any sorts of errors that happen to be at large, indiscriminately

Descriptive taxonomies (Ellis, 1994)

Categorizing errors into the linguistic categories that correspond closely to those found in structural syllabuses and language textbooks (e.g. spelling, morphology, grammar, lexis)

Explanatory taxonomies

Try to explain error sources (e.g. L1, teaching, induced, developmental)

5 key steps of CEA (Corder, 1967)

Data collection, error detection, error classification, error explanation, error gravity

2 types of error classification

Descriptive and explanatory taxonomies

3 types of error counting

Error percentage, error frequency, potential occasion analysis