Newcastle Corpus
Learners Year 12 and Year 13
Thirty students were recruited from year 12 of four different publicly-funded sixth form colleges. The students volunteered to take part in the project, and were not subject to any selection process.
The students were aged 16-17 at the time of the first round of recordings and in their sixth year of learning French. At this stage of the education system, it was the students' own choice to continue studying French at post-16 level, as it was not a compulsory part of the curriculum. When the second round of recordings was carried out one year later, the students were in year 13, aged 17-18 and in their seventh year of French studies (pre-university level).
Native Speakers
For comparison purposes, 15 French native speakers were recruited from one year's intake of university exchange students on the "Erasmus" programme. The subjects volunteered to take part in the project, and were not subject to any selection process.
The group consisted of 12 females and 3 males, aged between 19 and 21 at the time of the recordings.
The native speakers were recorded doing the same 6 oral tasks as the learners, and also completed one of the X-Lex vocabulary tasks.