What is VOICE

1
What is VOICE?

• VOICE, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of
  English, is a structured collection of language
  data, the first computer-readable corpus
  capturing spoken ELF interactions of this kind.

2
Corpus Description

• VOICE comprises naturally occurring, non-scripted
  and mostly face-to-face conversations in English
  as a lingua franca (ELF). The recordings made for
  VOICE are keyboarded by trained transcribers and
  stored in a computerized corpus.( In the language
  sciences a corpus is a body of written text or
  transcribed speech which can serve as a basis for
  linguistic analysis and description).

3
The aim of the VOICE project

• is to open the way for a large-scale and in-depth
  linguistic description of the most common
  contemporary use of English by providing a corpus
  of spoken ELF interactions which will be
  accessible to linguistic researchers all over the
  world.
• As a first target, VOICE aims to cover 1 million
  words of spoken ELF interactions, equalling
  approximately 140 hours of transcribed speech.

4
The speakers

• recorded in VOICE are fairly fluent ELF speakers
  from a wide range of first language backgrounds.
  So far, VOICE includes approximately 800 ELF
  speakers with 50 different first languages
  (disregarding varieties of the respective
  languages). In the initial phase, VOICE focuses
  mainly, but by no means exclusively, on European
  ELF speakers.
• The ELF interactions recorded cover a variety of
  different settings (professional, educational,
  informal), functions (exchanging information,
  enacting social relationships), participants'
  roles and relationships (acquainted vs.
  unacquainted, symmetrical vs. asymmetrical).

5
Jennifer Jenkins and Barbara Seidlhofer

• suggest how the results of new research into how
  'non-native' speakers of English use the language
  must change the way it is taught .( Jenkins
  handout)
• Seidlhofer has been compiling a corpus of
  interactions in English among fairly fluent
  speakers from a variety of first-language
  backgrounds.
• In her analyses of a variety of interactions
  such as casual conversations and academic
  discussions, no major disruptions in
  communication happened when speakers committed
  one or more of the following deadly "grammatical
  sins"

6
Unproblematic

• using the same form for all present tense
  verbs, as in 'you look very sad' and 'he look
  very sad' not putting a definite or indefinite
  article in front of nouns, as in "our countries
  have signed agreement about this" treating
  "who" and "which" as interchangeable relative
  pronouns, as in "the picture who. . ." or "a
  person which" using just the verb stem in
  constructions such as "I look forward to see you
  tomorrow" using "isn't it?" as a universal tag
  question (ie instead of "haven't they?" and
  "shouldn't he?"), as in "They've finished their
  dinner now, isn't it?".

7
Problematic

• Unilateral idiomaticity
• Lexical gaps

8
Result

• What the analyses of ELF interactions suggest is
  that the time needed to teach and learn these
  constructions bears very little relationship to
  their actual usefulness, as successful
  communication is obviously possible without them.

9
The first suggestion

• the need to encourage both teachers and students
  to adjust their
• attitudes towards ELFE. Even those who strongly
  support the
• development of a continental European hybrid
  variety of English that
• does not look to Britain or America for its
  standards of
• correctness, reveal a degree of schizophrenia in
  this respect. For
• example Charlotte Hoffman has described the
  English of European
• learners as spanning "the whole range from
  non-fluent to native-like",
• as though fluency in English were not a
  possibility for those whose
• speech does not mimic that of a native speaker.

10
The second suggestion

• it is crucial for English language teaching in
  Europe to focus on contexts of use that are
  relevant to European speakers of English. In
  particular, descriptions of spoken English
  offered to these learners should not be grounded
  in British or American uses of English but in
  ELFE or other non-native contexts.

11
Conclusion

• English is an international language and as such
  no longer the preserve of its native speakers. If
  English is indeed a lingua franca, then it should
  be possible to describe it as such without
  prejudice. And that may well be the biggest
  challenge for ELFE in the 21st Century.