What is VOICE - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 11
About This Presentation
Title:

What is VOICE

Description:

... and mostly face-to-face conversations in English as a lingua franca (ELF) ... If English is indeed a lingua franca, then it should be possible to describe it ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:73
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 12
Provided by: FSC182
Category:
Tags: voice | face | franca | lingua | sad

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: What is VOICE


1
What is VOICE?
  • VOICE, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of
    English, is a structured collection of language
    data, the first computer-readable corpus
    capturing spoken ELF interactions of this kind.

2
Corpus Description
  • VOICE comprises naturally occurring, non-scripted
    and mostly face-to-face conversations in English
    as a lingua franca (ELF). The recordings made for
    VOICE are keyboarded by trained transcribers and
    stored in a computerized corpus.( In the language
    sciences a corpus is a body of written text or
    transcribed speech which can serve as a basis for
    linguistic analysis and description).

3
The aim of the VOICE project
  • is to open the way for a large-scale and in-depth
    linguistic description of the most common
    contemporary use of English by providing a corpus
    of spoken ELF interactions which will be
    accessible to linguistic researchers all over the
    world.
  • As a first target, VOICE aims to cover 1 million
    words of spoken ELF interactions, equalling
    approximately 140 hours of transcribed speech.

4
The speakers
  • recorded in VOICE are fairly fluent ELF speakers
    from a wide range of first language backgrounds.
    So far, VOICE includes approximately 800 ELF
    speakers with 50 different first languages
    (disregarding varieties of the respective
    languages). In the initial phase, VOICE focuses
    mainly, but by no means exclusively, on European
    ELF speakers.
  • The ELF interactions recorded cover a variety of
    different settings (professional, educational,
    informal), functions (exchanging information,
    enacting social relationships), participants'
    roles and relationships (acquainted vs.
    unacquainted, symmetrical vs. asymmetrical).

5
Jennifer Jenkins and Barbara Seidlhofer
  • suggest how the results of new research into how
    'non-native' speakers of English use the language
    must change the way it is taught .( Jenkins
    handout)
  • Seidlhofer has been compiling a corpus of
    interactions in English among fairly fluent
    speakers from a variety of first-language
    backgrounds.
  • In her analyses of a variety of interactions
    such as casual conversations and academic
    discussions, no major disruptions in
    communication happened when speakers committed
    one or more of the following deadly "grammatical
    sins"

6
Unproblematic
  • using the same form for all present tense
    verbs, as in 'you look very sad' and 'he look
    very sad' not putting a definite or indefinite
    article in front of nouns, as in "our countries
    have signed agreement about this" treating
    "who" and "which" as interchangeable relative
    pronouns, as in "the picture who. . ." or "a
    person which" using just the verb stem in
    constructions such as "I look forward to see you
    tomorrow" using "isn't it?" as a universal tag
    question (ie instead of "haven't they?" and
    "shouldn't he?"), as in "They've finished their
    dinner now, isn't it?".

7
Problematic
  • Unilateral idiomaticity
  • Lexical gaps

8
Result
  • What the analyses of ELF interactions suggest is
    that the time needed to teach and learn these
    constructions bears very little relationship to
    their actual usefulness, as successful
    communication is obviously possible without them.

9
The first suggestion
  • the need to encourage both teachers and students
    to adjust their
  • attitudes towards ELFE. Even those who strongly
    support the
  • development of a continental European hybrid
    variety of English that
  • does not look to Britain or America for its
    standards of
  • correctness, reveal a degree of schizophrenia in
    this respect. For
  • example Charlotte Hoffman has described the
    English of European
  • learners as spanning "the whole range from
    non-fluent to native-like",
  • as though fluency in English were not a
    possibility for those whose
  • speech does not mimic that of a native speaker.

10
The second suggestion
  • it is crucial for English language teaching in
    Europe to focus on contexts of use that are
    relevant to European speakers of English. In
    particular, descriptions of spoken English
    offered to these learners should not be grounded
    in British or American uses of English but in
    ELFE or other non-native contexts.

11
Conclusion
  • English is an international language and as such
    no longer the preserve of its native speakers. If
    English is indeed a lingua franca, then it should
    be possible to describe it as such without
    prejudice. And that may well be the biggest
    challenge for ELFE in the 21st Century.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com