HL2C-SLLAT Seminar: Raffaella Bottini (Lancaster)

Title: Task effects on lexical complexity in L2 English speech: Evidence from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus

Date: Wednesday 24 May 2023, 12:00pm to 1:00pm.

Location: This session will run in hybrid mode. We meet in COS - County South C89 and will stream via Microsoft Teams.

Presenter(s): Raffaella Bottini (Lancaster)

How to join: The seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List or to the SLLAT mailing list to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

About: This is a joint event, co-organized by the Heritage Language 2 Consortium (HL2C) and the Second Language Learning and Teaching (SLLAT) Research Group.

Abstract:

Lexical complexity is a multidimensional construct which includes the sophistication, diversity and density of vocabulary produced in spoken or written communication. Measures of lexical complexity have applications in language assessment and language teaching and can inform research on language acquisition. Several indices and automatic tools have been developed to analyse lexical scores, and corpus linguistics has been the main method in this area. However, few studies have investigated lexical complexity in L2 spoken production since few large spoken learner corpora are available (Gablasova & Bottini, 2022). Also, the existing research on L2 speakers has mainly focused on the effect of proficiency, while task effects have not been fully investigated yet. This study aims at expanding prior research on lexical complexity in L2 speech, comparing monologic and dialogic tasks. It uses the 4.2-million-word Trinity Lancaster Corpus (Gablasova et al., 2019) based on a high-stakes exam of L2 spoken English.

Gablasova, D., & Bottini, R.(2022). Spoken learner corpora to inform teaching. In R. R. Jablonkai & E. Csomay (Eds.), Routledge handbook of corpora in English language teaching and learning. Routledge.

Gablasova, D., Brezina, V., & McEnery, T. (2019). The Trinity Lancaster Corpus: Development, description and application. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 5(2), 126–158.