Federica Barbieri

Quotative Use in American English A Corpus-Based, Cross-Register Comparison

Previous research on innovative quotative verbs (e.g., be like, go) has been based almost exclusively on narratives of personal experience or sociolinguistic interviews. The present study broadens our understanding of the extent to which new forms of quotatives are established in American English by looking at their use across different registers of spoken interaction. Specifically, the study investigates the frequency of use and grammatical association patterns of the quotatives be like, go, be all, and say in four registers: casual conversation, university service encounters and workplace conversation, university students’ study groups, and academic office hour consultations. The findings show that, overall, be like and go are well established across these registers, while be all is still rather uncommon. In addition, all new quotatives consistently occur more frequently in present tense, while the traditional quotative say is more frequent in the past. The analyses of the patterns of use of the quotatives with different grammatical subjects and of the discourse functions of the quotation support the hypothesis that be like is expanding in American English.

Applying Corpus-Based Findings to Form-Focused Instruction: The Case of Reported Speech.

Arguing that the introduction of corpus linguistics in teaching materials and the language classroom should be informed by theories and principles of SLA, this paper presents a case study illustrating how corpus-based findings on reported speech can be integrated into a form-focused model of instruction. After overviewing previous work which compares ESL grammar textbooks descriptions and real language use, and promotes the use of corpus-based findings to inform L2 textbook descriptions, we outline the results of a survey of the presentation of reported speech in current popular textbooks. The survey findings are contrasted with the patterns of use found in two corpus-based cross-register studies of reported speech, showing how textbooks neglect important information on the use of this structure in real language. The frequency patterns of use that emerged in the corpus studies are then used to identify 10 principles that should inform the design of L2 materials and classroom instruction of reported speech. In the second part of the paper we illustrate how corpus-based findings can be fruitfully implemented in a form-focused model of instruction through the use of structure-based tasks and selected principles of focus-on-form.

What Are They Talking about? Lessons Learned from a Study of Peer Instruction.

Electronic classroom response systems (CRSs) have been in use in large college lectures for over three decades. Such systems are designed to provide instructors and students with immediate statistical analyses of student electronic responses to multiple-choice questions posed to the class by the instructor. The technique known as peer instruction uses a CRS to tabulate student responses after students have had an opportunity to discuss ideas with seat partners. In this study, we investigate recorded peer CRS conversations collected in two introductory astronomy courses over two semesters. Findings suggest that when instructors adopt a high-stakes grading incentive that assigns little credit for incorrect CRS responses rather than providing forums for the spontaneous exploration of nascent ideas, conversations tend to become dominated by a single partner as students attempt to earn maximum credit for a correct answer. We also present a comparison of two methods for studying conversation bias in peer instruction discourse that could be valuable to other researchers interested in studying peer discourse.

Edited Volumes on Corpus Linguistics

Corpus Linguistics in North America offers concrete, diverse samples of corpus-based scholarship to readers desiring a well-rounded introduction to corpus linguistics. This book, which presents selected papers from a 1999 symposium (the first corpus linguistics symposium in North America), is particularly useful to readers who are considering using corpus linguistics as a tool in their research. However, language teachers who are interested in using corpus-based materials or methods in their classrooms will also find the book relevant.