Beyond Data-Driven Learning: Learning activities for a spoken multimedia corpus

Beyond Data-Driven Learning:Learning activities for a spoken multimedia corpus EUROCALL, Coleraine, 06 Sept 2007 Sabine Braun, University of Surrey

Introduction • The usefulness of corpora in language pedagogy is widely recognised. • But in particular the creation and use of spoken corpora for pedagogical purposes raises • challenges for corpus design and • methodological challenges of corpus exploitation.

Challenges (1) General challenges for the pedagogical use of corpora: • Corpora contain textual records of discourse; their interpretation requires (re-)contextualisation. • Learners may have difficulties analysing corpus data; they require pedagogical mediation. This can be overcome by • Communicative relevance of corpus content (e.g. complementarity with curriculum) • Pedagogically motivated corpus query options • Complementary tasks and exercises for corpus exploration

Challenges (2) Use of spoken corpora - spoken discourse is: • more dependent on shared physical contexts • multimodal in nature • adjusted to aural and online delivery and perception • adjusted to requirements of emphasis and economy • more tolerant towards non-standard forms but it is also affected by • limitations of processing capacity • variation in speech rate, pronunciation and accent

Questions • What of this do we need to teach? • What of this does a learner need to learn? • What does a learner need to know? • And what does it mean "to know"? • Knowing passively and actively • awareness and recognition (of forms) • comprehension (of spoken discourse !) • use and avoidance (of forms) • production (of spoken discourse)

LEAP – L1 and L2 speech samples (Gut 2006) DIT Speech Corpus – everyday language (Campbell et al 2007) MICASE – academic discourse (Univ. Michigan since 1997) Limerick – classroom discourse (Amador Moreno, Chambers, O'Riordan & 2006) MEC – everyday language(Ackerley & Coccetta 2007) ELISA – professional English (Braun 2005, 2006) SACODEYL – youth language speech production, pronunciation, prosody speech production, pronunciation, prosody discourse analysis, register analysis discourse analysis, register analysis multimodal analysis,discourse functions topics and communicative functions topics; discourse, grammat. and communicative functions Approaches: small spoken corpora

Approaches: small spoken corpora • Trend: multimedia corpora • new opportunities • How to make the most of this? • What/how to transcribe • What/how to annotate • What to select for learning activities

Approaches: small spoken corpora What to transcribe • Searches in spoken corpora largely rely on transcripts • But there are problems with representing spoken discourse in written form • No transcript is ever comprehensive • Complex transcripts are difficult to read and interpret, especially for learners • Changed role of transcripts in multimedia corpora What to annotate • Example:Communicative function: introducing yourself

Approaches: small spoken corpora • Example: communicative functions – introducing yourself Paul: Ok, my name is Paul. I live just outside Edinburgh and I have a variety of jobs actually. I don't just work in one job from morning ... conventional job from morning to evening, I have a number of different jobs. First of all… [ A teacher of English with a taste in music ] [video ] Chris: Well, hello Germany. My name is Chris and I live in Yulara, which is right next to Uluru, right in Central Australia. You've probably heard of Uluru. You may have heard of it called Ayers Rock. But out here, the aboriginal people call it Uluru and this is the resort town that we live in. [ A tour guide from Ayers Rock ] [ video ] Douglas: My name is Douglas Peter Ryan - Douglas. They named the town after me - Port Douglas - and I'm the unofficial mayor of Port Douglas. Port Douglas is a small town on a peninsula in Port Douglas, originally a gold mining town. [ The Rainforest Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary ] [ video ] Harold: Well, I'm Harold Grantham, I'm the owner of the Broken Saddle Riding Company, have been for the last eleven years. [ The 'Broken Saddle' Riding Company ] [ video ] Lou: Ok, I'm Lou Burnard. I'm the assistant director of the University Computing Services, here in Oxford University, and you're sitting in my highly comfortable office. [ Oxford University Computing Services ] [ video ]

Approaches: small spoken corpora • Usefulness of corpus queries based on different types annotation units vs. Effort and problems of annotation? • Browsing of annotated units matching search criteria vs. Exploration and discovery by the learner? • How close do we get to learning/teaching (sth about) spoken language?

Spoken discourse – what's in it Paul:Ok, my name is Paul. I live just outside Edinburgh and I have a variety of jobs actually. I don't just work in one job from morning ... conventional job from morning to evening, I have a number of different jobs. First of all I teach English as a foreign language to foreign students in the mornings and then I usually go home and I often have some technical translation from German to English. Andthen I also play in a Ceilidh band. [ A teacher of English with a taste in music ] [video ] • Who is Paul? … Why does he not just say: My name is Paul. I live just outside Edinburgh. I have a variety of jobs. • What does Paul do? … Why does he not just say: I'm a teacher of English. I'm a technical translator. I play in a Ceilidh band. • Why does he correct himself? I don't just work in one job from morning ... conventional job • What about the punctuation in the transcript? Does Paul talk in complete sentences? Listen again carefully. What do you notice?

Spoken discourse – what's in it Paul: Ok, my name is Paul. I live just outside Edinburgh and I have a variety of jobs actually. I don't just work in one job from morning ... conventional job from morning to evening, I have a number of different jobs. First of all I teach English as a foreign language to foreign studentsin the mornings and then I usually go home and I often have some technical translation from German to English. And then I also play in a Ceilidh band. [ A teacher of English with a taste in music ] [video ] • Paul uses the expressions first of all, in the mornings, then. Which of these form a pair? Which expressions would make the other pair complete? • How do other people use afternoon, evening, night?

Spoken discourse – what's in it … often up at three and four in themorning on the phone. I'm doing emails back and … … up by about seven or eight in themorning, then I train for an hour or two … … forty degrees by nine o'clock in themorning . And that can kill people unfortunately. … tour is about six, seven hours in themorning . I come back into Yulara, usually … … get up to do sunrises everymorning, take people out to see the sunrise on the rock. … they can read the ground everymorning - the animal tracks on it. It's fascinating. … I don't just work in one job frommorning to evening. … Mr Muller on Mondaymorning and Mr Schmidt on Monday afternoon etc. … starting again at two o'clock in theafternoon. Same again: pick up people … … from eight o'clock right through to five thirty in theafternoon. But our day starts … … and our first session is at four p.m. thisafternoon, and our next session is at seven … from five thirty till seven thirty in theevening. We do, every month, a morning … … after the wedding meal in theevening there's a Ceilidh, which means that we … And then we go back out on theeveningride, and then we put them up again … … discussing that this evening in theeveningsession. So, we had wanted to do this … … That's the discussion we'll have thisevening. … It's regularly the second and last Wednesdayevening of the month. … back home around nine o'clock atnight, so it's a pretty long day. For barbecue … … from six o'clock to eight o'clock at night depending on the times during the year. … farmers with whom our caravans can stop then at night and see what they can find … Ken: By the end of thenight it's not quality drinking.

Ways into patterns Sabine:Ok. So shall we talk a little bit about the band? Paul:Well yeah the band. That's my social life. A long time ago I was interested in international folk dance and I used to ... I joined a group in Edinburgh, here in Scotland, and one of the other people in the group was a man called Colin. And we used to meet every week, and we used to dance folk dances from ... could be from Bulgaria, from Hungary, from France, from Germany, from anywhere.[ video ] • Adaptation to online delivery • chunking – talk units • emphasis – discourse markers, word order, intonation • economy – ellipsis, contractions • syntactic/semantic breaks • Paul corrects himself in the middle of the sentence here. What could he have said? I was interested in international folk dance and I used to __________

Ways into patterns • Grammatical help: look at how Paul uses the verb used to: … And we used to meet every week … … and we used to dance folk dances … • Look at how other speakers use this phrase: … and the agency grew because I used to be a photographer. I was self-employed … … have been for the last eleven years. I used to be in the horse racing industry … …'Why don't you give it a go?' So, I used to drive Sydney to Cairns. … So I went back to the store where I used to work and asked the guy for a job. … long days, you don't work hard, like I used to with cattle, but you have to be … … The education system in the United States is not what it used to be. Compared to … … here with Sabine in the custard factory. It used to be a factory that made custard … … has made my job incredibly easy compared to what it used to entail as … … teaches tourists about how life used to be out here before Europeans came along… … their connection to New Mexico is they used to come across the old Santa Fe Trail … … Ceilidh traditionally is a gathering and it used to involve a whole community … … I suppose because I lived … I used to live abroad, I lived in Italy for a long time. • Compare Paul's self-correction with that in the last line. Can you think of a reason why this speaker decided to say I used to live abroad rather than I lived abroad?

Ways into patterns • What's the difference between the phrases used above and: … I was a photographer … I was in the horse-racing industry. … I drove Sydney to Cairns. … Ceilidh is traditionally gathering and it involved a whole community. • So, what's the difference between the following three phrases then: … I joined a band in Edinburgh. … I played in a band in Edinburgh. … I used to play in a band in Edinburgh.

Ways into patterns • A similar case… Chris:So, just to give you a bit more information about me. Before I came out here and before I became a tour guide, I grew up in a country town. And growing up in country towns, you play football and end up working on farms. So I started out as a stock man, big hats, big boots, tight jeans, working with cattle and sheep. Spent a fair bit of time just doing that. Did a bit of modelling for amateur stuff to promote wool, trying to sell wool around the world. … A friend of mine who owns a farm, who's also doing a bit of bus driving, said 'Hey, you'd like this. It's good fun, you get to meet lots of people, lots of girls.' He said 'Why don't you give it a go?' So, I used to drive Sydney to Cairns. It's about three thousand kilometres and a lot of fun. But I've always wanted to visit the Northern Territory - they call it frontier country out here - so, I just thought I'd come on out about nine months ago, being single it's easy. You just pack up and come out. So that's fantastic. [ A tour guide from Ayers Rock ] • Adaptation to online delivery • Used to

Larger patterns – identity Sabine: How does it feel for you being English and playing Scottish music? Paul: Yeah that's true, I'm English… I'm not Scottish, I don't have a Scottish accent, which actually my language students appreciate, but, no, I feel very much at home here. [ A teacher of English with a taste in music ] Rob: And I actually quite like the fact that, you know, Scotland has its own government, so is a little bit independent, you know. [ Working in IT ] Sabine: And what are the areas that the Scottish Parliament takes care of instead of Westminster Parliament? Secretary: Obviously the big things like defence and social security and employment, labour, these are all Westminster. We depend still on Westminster. But devolved things like education... [At the Inst. of Governance ] Ivor: … the Scottish Parliament only having sort of devolved matters, which include health, housing, transport - that's three examples which have major impact on policies, on peoples' lives. But there's a lot of things that … I think that monetary things like social welfare, which partly comes into health and welfare as well, but the monetary aspect of life is all done through London. And we actually need more powers in Scotland so that we can do this for ourselves. But it's trying to get them to listen. [ A member of the Scottish National Party ]

Larger patterns - attitudes Access-from-anywhere project Linda:We're certainly finding that support issues become more complicated because the people who are calling us up are not in Oxford, you know,they're in India on some sort of a field trip and they need to have access to journals and research materials that are stored here in Oxford and that are restricted. Because of licensing conditions and so on, we can't make the material available to just everyone, and it becomes kind of complicated then for people to sort of prove who they are so that they can get to the materials that they need access to. [ Working on a computing services helpdesk ] Lou:One of the things we're starting now to do is to develop a what we call a Common Computing Environment, so that there will be one kind of desktop that you can choose, and it will be exactly the same no matter where you are in the University. Say, you are working in your college on a computer, you have your file system, you have programs that you like using and you do your work and then you want to access the same files from another computer that happens to be on the network. It's in a completely different building, you have a way of authenticating yourself to say that you are who you say you are, and you can get access to that machine, and you can get access to the same files that you were working on before, from any machine, anywhere in the University. Even on your personal laptop if you decide to take it outside into the parks because it's a nice day … [ Oxford University Computing Services ] • Why this project?

By way of conclusion Language which does not have a moral content, which does not address issues such as freedom, responsibility, love, these important aspects … if that does not become part of a language lesson … I think I'm not happy. … I think in our time we are faced with so many challenges in the world which are fundamentally of a moral, ethical character that the language teaching must reflect that in some way. [ Paul ]

By way of conclusion Mastering corpus technologies in the pedagogical context: • Better understanding of the pedagogical (as opposed to the linguistic) needs of corpus analysis • Making best use of the 'power' of multimedia corpora • Needs-driven corpora, tools, methodologies and activities

Contact S.Braun@surrey.ac.uk www.corpora4learning.net/elisa

Ways into patterns Sabine:Ok. So shall we talk a little bit about the band? Paul:Well yeah the band. That's my social life. A long time ago I was interested in international folk dance and I used to ... I joined a group in Edinburgh, here in Scotland, and one of the other people in the group was a man called Colin. And we used to meet every week, and we used to dance folk dances from ... could be from Bulgaria, from Hungary, from France, from Germany, from anywhere. And then I lost contact with him. In the meantime I had my own business, I had a shop in Edinburgh where I sold kites and juggling materials and toys and other things, and then one day I met Colin in Edinburgh, and he said: 'Oh, I'm thinking of starting a band. Do you play anything?' So I said: 'Well, as a matter of fact I play the keyboards, I play the piano.' And he said: 'Oh, well, maybe you would like to meet the other members of the band.' That was eight years ago. And we've been playing continuously since then.[video ]

Beyond Data-Driven Learning: Learning activities for a spoken multimedia corpus