LANGSNAP Spanish Corpus

	Nicole Tracy-Ventura Applied Linguistics Oklahoma State University --
	Rosamund Mitchell-Emeritus Applied Linguistics - emeritus University of Southampton r.f.mitchell@soton.ac.uk
	Kevin McManus Applied Linguistics Pennsylvania State University kmcmanus@psu.edu website

Participants:	28
Type of Study:	Longitudinal
Location:	UK, various
Media type:	audio
DOI:	doi:10.21415/PN9K-RZ04

Citation Information

Mitchell, R., Tracy-Ventura, N., & McManus, K. (2017). Anglophone students abroad: Identity, social relationships and language learning. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.

Tracy-Ventura, N., Mitchell, R., & McManus, K. (2016). The LANGSNAP longitudinal learner corpus: Design and use. In M. Alonso Ramos (Ed.), Spanish learner corpus research: Current trends and future perspectives (pp. 117-142). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.

Corpus Description

The LANGSNAP L2 Spanish corpus presented here was created between 2011 and 2013 as part of the research project “Social networks, target language interaction and second language acquisition during the year abroad: a longitudinal study” (generally abbreviated to the “Language and social networks abroad project”, or LANGSNAP for short.) The overall aim of the project was to explore L2 development before, during and after a temporary sojourn abroad, and its relationship with sojourners’ personal development, social experiences and language practices when abroad. The main group of participants were 57 British undergraduates majoring in either French (n = 29) or Spanish (n = 28) at a single research-intensive university, over a period of 21 months, including an academic year spent either as an exchange student, a language teaching assistant, or a workplace intern, in France, Spain or Mexico. A second group were 10 L1 speakers each of French and Spanish, who completed the same language tasks as the L2 groups. Data concerning participants’ L2 development and also their language use practices and social engagement were gathered on six occasions during this time. The L2 Spanish data available here were generated by three L2 production tasks:

>semi-structured oral interviews
picture-based oral narratives
argumentative writing (a timed 150-word response to a stimulus question).

The corpus includes data from all six administrations of these tasks to the L2 Spanish group, plus data from the L1 speakers of Spanish. Anonymised audio files and linked transcripts in CHAT format are provided for the oral interview and narrative tasks.

The instruments used in LANGSNAP for L2 data collection are available in the IRIS repository together with the instruments developed for tracking language use (Language Engagement Questionnaire) and social networking (Social Networking Questionnaire). Further details on LANGSNAP tasks and procedures are available at http://langsnap.soton.ac.uk and in our 2017 book.

Acknowledgements

This project was funded from 2011-2013 by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, Award No. RES-062-23-2996. Principal Investigator was Rosamond Mitchell, Co-Investigators were Laurence Richard and Patricia Romero de Mills.