Heritage language learning: A corpus-based inquiry

OLESYA KISSELEV, PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Sixth Heritage Language Research Institute 2012

The planOverview of the Russian Flagship Program at Portland State University (RFP at PSU)Introduction into corpus linguistics approach to the study of languagePilot Russian Learner Corpus of Academic Writing (piRULEC)a sample of corpus approach to contrastive data-driven study of advanced learners of Russian as a Foreign and as a Heritage language

RFP at PSU strivesto create Superior speakers of Russian

In addition to requiring a great deal of language proficiency, a speaker at a high level of proficiency must also possess academic skills, such as the ability to hypothesize and persuade, and discourse skills that any educated person in the target culture would have required ... and professional background or a profession about which to conduct discourse at this level.

Malone, Rifkin, Christian, & Johnson in "Attaining High Levels of Proficiency: Challenges for Language Education in the United States," JDLS 2 (2004)

RFP student demographicyoung adults studying Russian with a goal to achieve a Superior level of proficiencyregularly-admitted students at PSUmost major in fields other than Russian are at least Intermediate-Mid or higher speakers of Russian (Advanced Track); absolute beginners (Beginner Track)come from different language backgrounds and language experience:Russian as a foreign language speakers (domestic, FLL) w/varying learning backgrounds Heritage speakers of Russian (HLL) of various age of exit, schooling experience, number of classes, usage of Russian outside of classroom, etc.

RFP at PSU program

FallWinterSpringSummerYear 1FRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: GlobalizationFRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: GlobalizationFRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: Globalization*Content-based courses taught by visiting professorsYear 2SINQ: American Studies

RUS416: American StudiesSINQ: Eco Sustainability

RUS416: Eco SustainabilitySINQ: European Studies

RUS416: European StudiesStudy in RussiaYear 3RUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Russian in the majorYear 4St.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting Change

FallWinterSpringSummerYear 1FRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: GlobalizationFRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: GlobalizationFRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: Globalization*Content-based courses taught by visiting professorsYear 2SINQ: American Studies

RUS416: American StudiesSINQ: Eco Sustainability

RUS416: Eco SustainabilitySINQ: European Studies

RUS416: European StudiesStudy in RussiaYear 3RUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Russian in the majorYear 4St.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting Change

FallWinterSpringSummerYear 1FRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: GlobalizationFRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: GlobalizationFRINQ: Globalization

RUS416: Globalization*Content-based courses by visiting professorsYear 2SINQ: American Studies

RUS416: American StudiesSINQ: Eco Sustainability

RUS416: Eco SustainabilitySINQ: European Studies

RUS416: European StudiesStudy in RussiaYear 3RUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Russian in the majorYear 4St.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting Change

RFP at PSU program

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FallWinterSpringSummerYear 1RUS150: Beginning Russian FlagshipRUS150: Beginning Russian FlagshipRUS150: Beginning Russian FlagshipRUS300Year 2Advanced Russian+RUS416: GlobalizationAdvanced Russian+RUS416: GlobalizationAdvanced Russian+RUS416: GlobalizationStudy in RussiaYear 3RUS416: American Studies+RUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: Eco Sustainability+RUS416: Russian in the majorRUS416: European Studies +RUS416: Russian in the major*content-based courses by visiting professorsYear 4St.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting ChangeSt.PetersburgCapstone: Effecting Change

RFP pedagogical challengesRelative lack of studies in advanced interlanguageDeficit of research of RHL Dearth of teaching materials for advanced levels of RussianNeed to assess the programNeed to assess students progress

+ readily available data => corpus of learner Russian

Corpus linguistics and learner corporaa learner corpus is a collection of authentic texts produced by L2, FL, HL speakers of a languageprincipledrepresentativevariable searchable (requires concordance software such as WordSmith Tools)annotated

eg. ICLE (Granger, 2002) is a corpus of essays on various topics produced by advanced EFL students of English studying in a non-English speaking country, of 11 different L1s

Why investigate learner and heritage corpora?A good corpus can helpidentify patterns of language developmentinform theory of languageidentify segments of language particularly difficult for FL/L2/HL learnersinform pedagogical practicesassess the effectiveness of pedagogical interventionassess students language progress

Pilot Russian Learner Corpus of Academic Writing (piRULEC)2009, data collection beginsin-class and h/w written assignmentsapp. 800 texts amounting to app. 250,000 words created by 36 learners (17 FLL + 19 HLL)text length varies from 40 words up to 2,000 wordsmore texts are being processednon-annotated

piRULECTypes of textsdata is restricted to one register academic writing;various formats: essay, summary of an article, critical analysis of text, answers to questions, research paper;different functions (skills): paraphrase, narration, description, compare/contrast, supported opinion, argumentation, and hypothesizing;timed/non-timed; individual work / group work.

piRULEC: header ID and file namesEach text contains a header ID that reflects the corpus design

The name of the file functions similarlyThe names allow researchers quickly assemble sub-corpora

Preliminary studies of piRULECDesigning protocols to assess development of writing complexity and accuracy (2010-2012)Negative transfer in the writing of proficient learners of Russian: a comparative study of FLL and HLL (2012)

An illustration of a data-driven contrastive studyguiding research questions: What are persistent difficulties in the language of advanced FLL and HLL writers of Russian? Are there differences between the two groups?students in their two last years of RFP 9 FLL9 HLLtwo sub-corpora, FL (27,448 tokens) and HL (27,559 tokens)in-class writing home-work assignmentsparagraphs and essaysapp. 3,000 words from each student

The study, first step: text statisticscorpus text analizer WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2001) provides text statistics:words (word tokens), word typestype/token ratio (TTR)mean length of a wordnumber of sentences, paragraphs. mean length of a sentence / paragraphetc.

The study: text statistics

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The study: text statisticsLexical diversity

FL CorpusHL CorpusNumber of authors99Number of words (tokens)27,44827,559Types (distinct words)7,5498,632Type/token ratio (TTR)21.5131.69

The study, step 2: a word-listtyposlexical borrowings:FLL: HL: word-creationFLL: , , HLL : , orthography errors

The study: word list, orthography (spelling) errors

Type of errorFL CorpusHL CorpusErrors in the stem(ortho-phonetic):

Vowels (unstressed vowels)

Consonants (palatalized consonants n/n, l / l, z/z , s/s )

Duplicate consonants (n, l, m, s)

Morphological mistakes in the prefix-stem juncture (voiced/voiceless consonants)

;

_, _, , ,

, ,

,

; ,

, ,

, ,

The study: word list, orthography (spelling) errors

Type of errorFL CorpusHL CorpusErrors in the inflection(morpho-grammatical):Noun endings anddjective endings

Verbal endings (esp. 1st and 2nd conjugation)

Various

Participles (duplicate n in passive participles)

Soft/hard endings in adjectives (, )

,

, N/A

Unstressed vowels()

, ,

,

,

The study, step 3: concordance lines, participles

The study, step 3: concordance lines, participlesRussian participles:present active, past active, present passive, past passive: F=attributive,short form: F=predicative, derived from past passive, part of predicate

FLL and HLL use all 5 forms of participles

Present active participlePast active participle Present passive participle Past passive participleShort form participleFLL59922698HLL8222356145

The study: participle useComparison of percentage of participles in written speech used by FLL and HLL in the study and NLL (Russian National Corpus)

The diversity of lexemes used to form participles is higher for HLL than FLL

Present active participlePast active participle Present passive participle Past passive participleShort form participleFLL0.21%0.03%0.007%0.09%0.35%HLL0.29%0.07%0.01%0.2%0.52%NLL0.41%0.33%0.10%0.73%0.52%

The study: participles in independent clauses and short participle as a part of predicate

Present active participlePast active participle Present passive participle Past passive participleFLL28 / 57 / 51 / 010 / 3HLL33 / 12 14 / 63 / 033 / 11

Short form participlePercentage of errorsFLL98 / 2424.5%HLL145 / 128.2%

The study: types of errors in participlesErrors are qualitatively different:FLL: wrong participle form (n=14)gender (n=8)case (n=5)number (n=4)odd forms (n=4)missing comma (n=2)n / nn (n=2)HLL: case (n=2);odd form (n=3)missing comma (n=15)n / nn (n=21);

The study: conclusions Both groups of learners, FLL and HLL, continue to struggle with participles even at advanced level of lg proficiency.HLL seem to have certain advantage over the FLL in participle uselexical diversitychoice of correct formproduction of correct formBoth groups might benefit from pedagogical intervention.

Challenges for learner and heritage corpora very few learner and heritage corpora existno parallel corporaconcordance software for exotic languages is lackingtaggers for non-standard varieties of language are under-developed

still, the field is developing fast and the results are promising!

Acknowledgements:Many thanks to my tireless colleague and supporter, Anna Yatsenko.THANK YOU!

OLESYA KISSELEV: kisselev@pdx.edu