The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS), Lancaster University and Trinity College London are pleased to announce the Trinity Lancaster Corpus Early Access Data Grant Scheme.
Applications are now open for researchers with an interest in spoken second language production and learner corpora to gain early access to a large subset of the Trinity Lancaster Corpus (TLC) of spoken L2 English and publish their findings (subject to peer-review) in a special issue of the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research or an edited volume published by a major publisher. The deadline for applications for the early access scheme is 20th January 2017.
The corpus consists of transcribed recordings from the General Examinations of Spoken English (GESE) developed and delivered by Trinity College London, a major international examination board. The corpus includes transcribed interactions between candidates and examiners from B1 to C2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). Each candidate participated in two to four different speaking tasks. Click here for more information about the corpus.
We invite proposals for interesting and innovative research that would be based on the Trinity Lancaster Corpus as its primary source of data. Successful applicants will gain access to approximately two million words from the TLC data via the SketchEngine platform, which provides standard corpus analytical functionality. N.B. SketchEngine accounts are not part of the Early Access Data Grant Scheme.
The Early Access Data Grant Scheme will allow researchers to search the data according to different tasks and speaker characteristics such as L2 proficiency level, age, gender and L1 background; in addition, TLC could be compared with other corpora available in the SketchEngine or any corpora uploaded to the SketchEngine by the researcher.
Proposals can approach the data from any theoretical angle, provided corpus methodologies are used and the research can be carried out within the affordances of SketchEngine. Successful applicants will receive access to the data in February 2017 with a deadline for full paper submission in October 2017. Subject to peer review, papers will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research or an edited volume published by a major publisher.
More details about the terms of the data grant scheme can be found in the application form. To apply, download and complete the application form and email it to Dana Gablasova (d.gablasova@lancaster.ac.uk) by Friday, 20th January 2017.
Timeline
| 21 November 2016 | Call for Trinity Lancaster Corpus Early Access Data Grant Scheme applications |
| 20 January 2017 | Deadline for submission of applications |
| Early February 2017 | Announcement of the results and access to the data |
| 31 October 2017 | Submission of papers |