• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.27-39
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• 2020

This paper examines the frequency and distribution of the so-called "non-discourse marker functions" of so in essay writings produced by 200 L1 English speakers and 1,300 EFL learners in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Based on the data drawn from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English, this study compares EFL learners and L1 English speakers' uses of so, identifying four grammatical uses, as (1) an adverb, (2) part of a fixed phrase, (3) a pro-form, and (4) a conjunction phrase specifying purpose. This study aims to show the wide variability among EFL learners with different L1s, identifying the tendency of usage both common among and specific to the sub-groups of EFL learners. The findings suggest that the learners demonstrate patterns distinctively different from those of L1 English speakers, indicating an underuse of so as a marker expressing "purpose" and an overuse as part of fixed phrases. Compared to L1 English speakers, the learners also tend to overuse so in the discourse marker functions, regardless of their L1s. The study proposes pedagogical implications focusing on discourse flow and diachronic aspects of so in order to understand its multifunctionality, although the latter is primarily suggested for advanced learners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.115-121
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• 2011

This paper examines how L2 speech production varies according to learner's L2 proficiency level. L2 speech production variations are analyzed by quantitative measures at word and phone levels using Korean learners' English corpus. Word-level variations are analyzed using correctness to explain how speech realizations are different from the canonical forms, while accuracy is used for analysis at phone level to reflect phone insertions and deletions together with substitutions. The results show that speech production of learners with different L2 proficiency levels are considerably different in terms of performance and individual realizations at word and phone levels. These results confirm that speech production of non-native speakers varies according to their L2 proficiency levels, even though they share the same L1 background. Furthermore, they will contribute to improve non-native speech recognition performance of ASR-based English language educational system for Korean learners of English.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.57-72
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• 2020

This study seeks to add to the current understanding of learners' use of modality in argumentative writing. A learner corpus of argumentative essays on four topics was created and compared to native English speaker data from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). The relationship between learners' use of modal devices (MDs) and the devices' appearance in the school's curriculum was also examined. The results showed that learners relied on a very narrow range of MDs compared to those in previous studies. The frequency of use of MDs varied based on the topic and did not seem to be driven by cultural factors as has been previously suggested. Learners used more hedges than boosters on all topics, contradicting most previous studies. Curriculum was determined to have a direct correlation with MD use, and other important factors may include perception of topic and overreliance on certain MDs over others (the One-to-One principal). This research implies that learners' perception of topic should be explored further as a variable affecting MD use. Curricula should be designed based on frequency of MD use by English native speakers, and learners should receive instruction that teaches the norms of MD use in academic writing. The methodology used in the study to determine correlations between MD use and the curriculum has a wide range of potential applications in the field of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-39
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• 2023

Recent research in usage-based Second Language Acquisition has provided new insights into second language (L2) learners' development of formulaic language (Wulff, 2019). The current study examines the use of phrase-frames, which are recurring sequences of words including one or more variable slots (e.g., it is * that), in written and oral production data from Asian learners of English across four proficiency levels (beginner, low-intermediate, high-intermediate, advanced) and native English speakers. The variability, predictability, and discourse functions of the most frequent 4-word phrase-frames from the written essay and spoken dialogue sub-corpora of the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE) were analyzed and then compared across groups and modes. The results revealed that while learners' phrase-frames in writing became more variable and unpredictable as proficiency increased, no clear developmental patterns were found in speaking, although all groups used more fixed and predictable phrase-frames than the reference group. Further, no developmental trajectories in the functions of the most frequent phrase-frames were found in both modes. Additionally, lower-level learners and the reference group used more variable phrase-frames in speaking, whereas advanced-level learners showed more variability in writing. This study contributes to a better understanding of the development of L2 phraseological competence.

• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
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• 2001.01a
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• pp.292-297
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• 2001

In writing learning as a second/foreign language, a learner has to acquire not only lexical and syntactical knowledge but also the skills to choose suitable words for content which s/he is interested in. A learning system should extrapolate learner\\`s intention and give example phrases that concern with the content in order to support this on the system. However, a learner cannot always represent a content of his/her desired phrase as inputs to the system. Therefore, the system should be equipped with a diagnosis function for learner\\`s intention. Additionally, a system also should be equipped with an analysis function to score similarity between learner\\`s intention and phrases which is stored in the system on both syntactic and idiomatic level in order to present appropriate example phrases to a learner. In this paper, we propose architecture of an interactive support method for English writing learning which is based an analogical search technique of sample phrases from corpora. Our system can show a candidate of variation/next phrases to write and an analogous sentence that a learner wants to represents from corpora.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.33-40
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• 2020

The purpose of this research was to find out the relation between Korean learners' English proficiency and the ratio of the length of the stressed vowel in a monosyllabic noun to that of the unstressed vowel in an article of the noun phrases (e.g., "a cup", "the bus", etcs.). Generally, the vowels in monosyllabic content words are phonetically more prominent than the ones in monosyllabic function words as the former have phrasal stress, making the vowels in content words longer in length, higher in pitch, and louder in amplitude. This study, based on the speech samples from Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC) and Rated Korean-Spoken English Corpus (Rated K-SEC), examined 879 English noun phrases, which are composed of an article and a monosyllabic noun, from sentences which are rated on 4 levels of proficiency. The lengths of the vowels in these 879 target NPs were measured and the ratio of the vowel lengths in nouns to those in articles was calculated. It turned out that the higher the proficiency level, the greater the mean ratio of the vowels in nouns to the vowels in articles, confirming the research's hypothesis. This research thus concluded that for the Korean English learners, the higher the English proficiency level, the better they could produce the stressed and unstressed vowels with more conspicuous length differences between them.