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Face-to-face Interaction in a Speaking Test: A Corpus-Based Study of Chinese Learners’ Basic Spoken Vocabulary

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Assessing Chinese Learners of English

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Abstract

Natural language use constitutes the best source of linguistic evidence (Sinclair & Carter, 2004). The availability of large corpora changes considerably the possibility of research on authentic language data (Adolphs & Carter, 2013; Hunston, 2002). Recently, analyses of learner corpora against native speaker corpora provide insights for vocabulary teaching and learning. Corpus linguistics studies have included spoken language data for the purpose of developing pedagogical materials (Biber, 2006; Campoy-Cubillo, Bellés-Fortuño, & Gea-Valor, 2010; Granger, 2003). By comparing a learner corpus with a native speaker corpus, it is ‘possible to identify instances of learners’ underuse or overuse of spoken vocabulary, as well as to investigate how far, and in what ways, learners deviate from NS norms’ (Shirato & Stapleton, 2007, p. 394).

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Authors
  1. Shasha Xu
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bristol, UK

    Guoxing Yu

  2. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

    Yan Jin

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© 2016 Shasha Xu

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Xu, S. (2016). Face-to-face Interaction in a Speaking Test: A Corpus-Based Study of Chinese Learners’ Basic Spoken Vocabulary. In: Yu, G., Jin, Y. (eds) Assessing Chinese Learners of English. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137449788_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137449788_5

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55397-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44978-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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