Rationale
An earlier project (Myles, 2002; ESRC grant R000223421) investigated the suitability of a range of computerised methodologies for data management and analysis, culminating in the adoption of the CHILDES tools, well established in first language acquisition research, but not so far in second language research, in spite of pleas from SLA researchers to adopt up to date and internationally recognised tools for storing, transcribing and analysing data.
The CHILDES software enables datasets to be readily accessible on the web, as a set of digital sound files and linked transcripts in CHILDES format, with various levels of coding. These datasets can then be downloaded and worked on by SLA researchers, who can have instant access to learners at different levels performing a range of tasks. Moreover, the flexibility of the CHILDES tools enables further levels of coding to be added to the data, depending on specific researchers’ agendas. In the context of the current project, the focus of the coding has been morphosyntactic, but any researcher with an interest in, say, phonology, can add phonological coding to the data, thus ensuring optimal efficiency of the most expensive SLA resource, oral corpora.
The construction of the website aims to provide an easily navigable facility, including a listing of corpora and their description, and a search facility enabling the retrieval of files (transcripts, soundfiles and tagged files) according to specified criteria such as learner, task, level, etc.
References
Myles, F. (2002). Linguistic development in classroom learners of French: a cross-sectional study (No. ESRC grant R000223421). Southampton: University of Southampton.