The Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) is a corpus of informal interviews with higher intermediate to advanced learners of English. It results from a collaborative project between several universities internationally, coordinated at the University of Louvain. The corpus contains over 1 million words, of which almost 800,000 were produced by learners, representing 11 different mother tongue backgrounds: Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish and Swedish.
List of tables and figures ...................................................................... v
Preface ................................................................................................ vii
Acknowledgements ...........................................................................viii
List of abbreviations............................................................................ ix
0. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................... 1
PART 1. DESCRIPTION OF THE CORPUS................................. 3
1. General introduction.................................................................. 3
1.1. Historical background ........................................................... 3
1.2. Corpus or database?............................................................... 5
1.3. LINDSEI design criteria........................................................ 6
1.3.1. Interview variables ......................................................... 7
1.3.1.1. Genre ....................................................................... 8
1.3.1.2. Duration................................................................... 8
1.3.1.3. Three tasks............................................................... 8
1.3.1.4. Institution ................................................................ 9
1.3.2. Learner variables ............................................................ 9
1.3.2.1. Learning context...................................................... 9
1.3.2.2. Proficiency............................................................. 10
1.3.2.3. Age ........................................................................ 11
1.3.2.4. Gender ................................................................... 11
1.3.2.5. Mother tongue ....................................................... 11
1.3.2.6. Country.................................................................. 12
1.3.2.7. Knowledge of other foreign languages ................. 12
1.3.2.8. Stay in an English-speaking country ..................... 12
1.3.3. Interviewer variables .................................................... 12
1.3.3.1. Gender ................................................................... 12
1.3.3.2. Mother tongue ....................................................... 12
1.3.3.3. Knowledge of foreign languages........................... 12
1.3.3.4. Status ..................................................................... 13
1.4. Transcription and markup ................................................... 13
2. Project teams............................................................................. 19
2.1. Coordinating team............................................................... 19
2.2. IT team ................................................................................ 19
2.3. National teams..................................................................... 19
3. Structure of the corpus ............................................................ 23
3.1. General breakdown.............................................................. 23
3.1.1. Length of the interviews............................................... 23
3.1.2. Three tasks.................................................................... 28
3.1.3. Duration of the interviews............................................ 30
3.1.4. Set topic........................................................................ 30
3.1.5. Learners' age ................................................................ 32
3.1.6. Learners' gender........................................................... 32
3.1.7. Learners' education ...................................................... 33
3.1.8. Stay in an English-speaking country ............................ 35
3.1.9. Interviewers’ gender..................................................... 35
3.1.10. Interviewers’ mother tongue ...................................... 36
3.2. Breakdown per national subcorpus ..................................... 37
3.2.1. Subcorpus information ................................................. 37
3.2.1.1. Bulgarian subcorpus .............................................. 37
3.2.1.2. Chinese subcorpus................................................. 38
3.2.1.3. Dutch subcorpus .................................................... 39
3.2.1.4. French subcorpus................................................... 40
3.2.1.5. German subcorpus................................................. 41
3.2.1.6. Greek subcorpus .................................................... 41
3.2.1.7. Italian subcorpus.................................................... 42
3.2.1.8. Japanese subcorpus................................................ 43
3.2.1.9. Polish subcorpus.................................................... 44
3.2.1.10. Spanish subcorpus ............................................... 45
3.2.1.11. Swedish subcorpus .............................................. 46
3.2.2. Learning context........................................................... 47
3.2.2.1. Bulgaria (LINDSEI-BG) ....................................... 47
3.2.2.2. China (LINDSEI-CH) ........................................... 48
3.2.2.3. Dutch-speaking Belgium (LINDSEI-DU)............. 48
3.2.2.4. French-speaking Belgium (LINDSEI-FR) ............ 49
3.2.2.5. Germany (LINDSEI-GE) ...................................... 50
3.2.2.6. Greece (LINDSEI-GR).......................................... 51
3.2.2.7. Italy (LINDSEI-IT) ............................................... 52
3.2.2.8. Japan (LINDSEI-JP).............................................. 53
3.2.2.9. Poland (LINDSEI-PL)........................................... 54
3.2.2.10. Spain (LINDSEI-SP)........................................... 55
3.2.2.11. Sweden (LINDSEI-SW)...................................... 55
4. Methodology ............................................................................. 57
4.1. Learner corpora and SLA.................................................... 57
4.2. Intra-corpus comparisons .................................................... 58
4.3. LINDSEI vs ICLE............................................................... 62
4.4. LINDSEI vs LOCNEC........................................................ 65
4.5. Four-way comparisons ........................................................ 67
PART 2. LINDSEI USER MANUAL............................................. 71
1. Introduction .............................................................................. 71
2. Licence Agreement ................................................................... 72
3. Software installation ................................................................ 76
3.1. Individual licence ................................................................ 76
3.1.1. Installation procedure ................................................... 76
3.1.2. Launching the software ................................................ 77
3.1.3. Uninstalling the software.............................................. 77
3.1.4. Location of the data...................................................... 77
3.2. Multiple-user licence........................................................... 78
3.2.1. Installation procedure ................................................... 78
3.2.2. Launching the software ................................................ 79
3.2.3. Uninstalling the software.............................................. 79
3.2.4. Location of the data...................................................... 79
4. The REQUEST window........................................................... 80
4.1. Composition of the Request window .................................. 80
4.1.1. Alphanumerical fields .................................................. 82
4.1.2. Numerical fields ........................................................... 83
4.1.3. Variables with multiple options ................................... 83
4.2. Selecting the corpus............................................................. 84
4.3. The Zoom function.............................................................. 84
4.4. Resetting the selection......................................................... 86
4.5. Submitting the query ........................................................... 86
4.6. Functions available on the main command bar of the
Request window ......................................................................... 86
5. The RESULT window.............................................................. 87
5.1. Deselecting profiles............................................................. 87
5.2. Key terms: selected corpus and sub-corpus........................ 88
5.3. Viewing the profiles ............................................................ 88
5.4. Generating a report.............................................................. 90
5.5. Computing statistics ............................................................ 91
5.6. Viewing a text and merging texts into a corpus .................. 95
5.7. Functions available on the main command bar of the
Result window............................................................................ 97
6. Report problems....................................................................... 98
LINDSEI bibliography....................................................................... 99
Appendix 1: Cartoon used in the picture description task................ 109
Appendix 2: Learner profile questionnaire ...................................... 110