Dr Raffaella Bottini

Lecturer in Corpus Linguistics

Profile

I am a lecturer in corpus linguistics and I completed my doctoral research at the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS). My background is in language teaching and testing. Before joining Lancaster University, I worked as an English language tutor at University College London, Università Degli Studi di Milano in Italy, and in secondary schools in Italy, focusing on English for academic purposes and special educational needs.

My doctoral research focused on the application of corpus methods to the analysis of vocabulary in L2 English speech to inform language testing and second language acquisition. More specifically, my PhD research explored lexical complexity at different proficiency levels in the Trinity Lancaster Corpus, a 4.2-million-word learner corpus of L2 English spoken exams.

Research Interests

My main research interests are corpus linguistics, vocabulary, and language testing. My expertise lies in the development of quantitative methods and automatic tools for learner corpus research. Statistical analysis and data visualization are a central area of my research which expands to the fields of register analysis, second language acquisition, and language teaching.

I am a member of SLLAT, LTRG and Advanced Methods (Trinity) research groups.

Current Teaching

I mainly teach on the MA in Corpus Linguistics (distance) and on the PgCert in Corpus Linguistics (distance), and contribute to the MA in TESOL (distance).

LING553 - Corpus design and data collection
LING555 - Statistics and data visualization
LING558 - Corpus-based grammar and vocabulary
LING402 - Postgraduate academic study skills

I contribute to the following udergraduate modules:

LING326 - Corpus-based English language studies
LING102 - English language

During the summer, I contribute to:

Previous teaching:

LING218 - Language and Pedagogic Practice
LING531 - Trends and Issues in Language Teaching Methodology

Qualifications

PhD Linguistics (Lancaster University, UK); MA Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching (King's College London, UK); MA English Language and Literary Studies (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy).

Teaching qualifications: Associate Fellowship of Advance Higher Education; Qualified teacher status (The National College for Teaching and Leadership, UK); PGCE Special educational needs (Università Bicocca Milano, Italy); PGCE English language and literature (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy).