| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
During the last year I have collected data from students learning Spanish in a specialized context, at Kansai Gaidai University: 459 learners with Japanese as their first language who are majoring in Spanish have participated by filling a learner profile questionnaire and the teachers in charge of their classes have collaborated by proving copies of students’ texts, 1,840 texts in total, around 140,801 words. All the data has been digitized and anonymized to ensure participants’ privacy.
This data, together with data collected at Kyoto University (278 learners with Japanese as their first language, 2,111 texts, 144,060 words), where learners study Spanish in a non-specialized context, aims to be a representative sample of the learning of Spanish in higher education in Japan.
The majority of learners has written several texts during the course of one academic year, so a researcher can study the evolution of students' writing. At Kansai Gaidai 78% of learners has written between 3 and 6 texts, while at Kyoto University 92% has written between 7 and 8. Each text contains various information about the learner and about the text itself. About the learner: age, mother tongue, university, academic year, proficiency level of the class, etc. About the text: date, title, function, genre, addressee, specific notion, textbook used in class, written in the classroom or at home, situation (homework or exam), time limit, etc.
The resulting corpus of approximately 300,000 words will be made available to other researchers at the Sketch Engine platform.
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