Linguistic Development Corpus
Tasks
Four oral tasks were administered to all 60 subjects, on a one-to-one basis with a researcher. The tasks used were the same for all years, in order to enable a comparison of results. Moreover, some of the tasks were the same as those used in the "Progression Project" (to enable comparisons to be drawn). The tasks were as follows:
Cartoon story (Loch Ness Monster): in this task, learners have to tell a story on the basis of a series of cartoon pictures. This task was developed and used in the Progression Project. As well as eliciting a good range of the structures under investigation, it also provides valuable information on learners' developing discourse level skills. For a sample of the task, please click here.
Interrogative elicitation task: this task is an information gap activity in which the subjects have to find out missing information from the researcher in order to reconstruct a drawing. The main purpose of this task is to elicit interrogative constructions and pronominal reference, as well as gender markings. This task was also developed and used in the Progression Project. For a sample of the task, please click here.
Photos task: One-to-one interview with a researcher: this is a directed conversation with a researcher in which the subject has to respond to a number of questions, as well as ask questions based on photographs brought by the researcher. The main purpose of this task is to elicit all the structures investigated, with a particular focus on verbal morphology (past tense, future). A version of this task was used in the Progression Project, although we modified it in order to ensure elicitation of a range of temporal reference (as we were dealing with more advanced learners). For a sample of the task, please click here.
Negative elicitation task: learners have to describe a famous person by saying what they do and do not do (following picture cues), and the researcher has to guess who the famous person is on the basis of the learner’s description and a series of possible celebrities. For a sample of the task, please click here.
All tasks were recorded digitally, and took around 15 minutes each, in a one-to-one situation with a researcher, making a total of around one hour of spoken language per pupil.