A challenge of large-scale oral communication assessments is to feasibly assess a broad construct that includes interactional competence. One possible approach in addressing this challenge is to use a spoken dialog system (SDS), with the computer acting as a peer to elicit a ratable speech sample. With this aim, an SDS was built and four trained…

We examine the syntactic structures exhibited by persons with dementia in conversation. Traditionally, research on the linguistic abilities of persons with dementia is either observational (reports kept by caregivers) or experimental (e.g. based on comprehension tasks), and the focus is not on the syntactic competence of the speaker. We combine…

The present study applies corpus-based methods to document the distributional patterns of previously reported lexical bundle functions as they relate to discourse structure. Specifically, 84 lexical bundles and their discourse functions (Biber "et al." 2004a) were tracked in 1,176 discourse units extracted from the initial phases of 196 university…

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical markers of important lecture points and proposes a classification in terms of their interactive and textual orientation. The importance markers were extracted from the British Academic Spoken English corpus using corpus-driven and corpus-based methods. The classification is based on…

The present study adds to our understanding of how learners employ lexical and grammatical phenomena to communicate in writing in different types of interlanguage discourse. A multidimensional (factor) analysis of a corpus of L2 Spanish writing (202,241 words) generated by second- and third-year, university-level learners was performed. The…

Court interpreters are required to provide accurate renditions of witnesses' utterances during courtroom examinations, but the accuracy of interpreting may be compromised for a number of reasons, among which is the effect on interpretation of the limited contextual information available to court interpreters. Based on the analysis of the discourse…

This study examines the linguistic complexity and lexical diversity of both overt and covert L2 output produced during synchronous written computer-mediated communication, also referred to as chat. Video enhanced chatscripts produced by university learners of German (N = 23) engaged in dyadic task-based chat interaction were coded and analyzed for…

John McHardy Sinclair has made major contributions to applied linguistics in three related areas: language in education, discourse analysis, and corpus-assisted lexicography. This article discusses the far-reaching implications for language description of this third area. The corpus-assisted search methodology provides empirical evidence for an…

This paper is principally about methodology. It first summarizes five issues in the emerging research agenda of conversation analysis-for-second language acquisition (CA-for-SLA), and develops empirically based analyses of classroom talk that occurs over several days and months to illustrate how a longitudinal learning behavior tracking (LBT)…

Using a discourse analytic approach from the work of Hoey (1991) and a dual processing model from Wray (2000), this paper compares the language produced by the same classes of children when they are engaged in role-play and when they are playing rule-based games. We find that role-play tends to be richer in "frozen" pair parts, where the responses…

Reports on one important component of language by means of which scientific Research Article (RA) writers structure textual interaction with the external community, namely choices of unmarked theme, i.e., grammatical subject. A functional analysis is presented that reveals how the changing discourse roles of subjects throughout scientific RAs…

Using a framework of systemic functional grammar, compares two modes of presenting the same scientific topic: in a physics textbook and in interactive teacher talk. Three aspects of scientific meaning making are analyzed: representations of physical and mental reality, lexical packaging, and the rhetorical structure of reasoning. (Author/VWL)

Provides a developmental description of the language used by an academic discourse community. Casual conversations of six post-graduate students--all native speakers of English--were recorded in the Applied Linguistics common room at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Findings may help English-for-academic-purposes students to interact better…

Describes a project to code complementation patterns of all verbs in the Collins COBUILD English language corpus, using simple notation based on words and word classes rather than traditional functional categories. This is the first pedagogic grammar to integrate syntax and lexis using corpus data. Explores the possibility of using a pattern…

Compares strategies for conjunction in spoken English and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing. The article illustrates how ESL writers use "because" clauses to indicate the knowledge base for their assertions, to introduce independent segments, and to display links between sections of discourse. (44 references) (Author/CK)