2014 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Investigating a Learner Corpus of Computer-mediated Communication
| Project/Area Number |
26580077
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| Research Institution | J. F. Oberlin University |
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Principal Investigator |
MARCHAND Tim 桜美林大学, 言語学系, 講師 (20645197)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
阿久津 純恵 桜美林大学, 言語学系, 講師 (20460024)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | CMC / learner corpus / register / proficiency |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Research achievements are as follows:
(1) Creation of website for the lesson materials and collection point for the learner data.
(2) Multidimensional analysis of native-speaker CMC. Following Biber's Dimensions of register variation, the reference corpus CMC closest genre type is "prepared speeches" according to Dimension one (D1), "conversations" according to D2, "academic prose" according to D3, "personal letters" according to D4, and "prepared speeches" according to D5.
(3) Application of proficiency measurement tool. Some 1,200 comments were rated using tool, tool validity and interrater reliability checked.
(4) Analysis of learner corpus measuring background motivation.
(5) Preliminary results shared and discussed with other scholars at conferences.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
(1) Data collection is on schedule. 28 original news articles were added to the website, serving as the stimulus for the learner CMC, and over 100,000 tokens of learner CMC data have been added to the corpus. However, cleaning up the corpus data, and handling spelling mistakes etc are issues that need to be resolved.
(2) Multidimensional analysis of the native-speaker corpus is a promising avenue of research.
(3) The proficiency measurement tool may need rethinking to make it practicable. It was designed to be easy to use, but the raters still found the tool labour intensive, garnering less than 70% agreement between them.
(4) Motivation results show that unfamiliarity with topic actually motivates learners to write more.
(5) Sharing the research successful, behind on background reading.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
(1) Continue to develop the website, collect data of learner CMC, and investigate other pedagogical outcomes.
(2) Subject the learner corpus to multidimensional analysis to serve as a comparison to the native-speaker corpus. Investigate the longitudinal development of the learner corpus, to see whether the learners converge to native-speaker norms.
(3) Investigate alternative proficiency measurements, such as bigrams.
(4) Continue to share the results of , and receive feedback on, the project at conferences.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Not all the money was used in the first year because personnel expenditure was not required as planned, with changes to the plan for rating the texts. The practical needs of setting up the website and collecting data postponed the purchase of reference books as well.
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| Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
We anticipate more money will be spent on books for reference this year, and personnel expenditure to help with processing some of the learner data.
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| Remarks |
This website stores the lesson materials and collects the CMC data.
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