The Survey of English Usage
Quarterly Newsletter
June 2014
This newsletter is part of a series of quarterly newsletters from the Survey of English Usage, intended to keep the academic community and other interested parties informed about research in the Survey. The newsletter will be sent out in March, June, September and December. The March issue is the Survey’s Annual report.
Research
ESP – English Spelling & Punctuation
Our third app has been published for Apple devices. Designed and written by Seth Mehl and Sean Wallis, ESP is an app designed for adult English speakers who struggle with English spelling. The word lists used are based on the words that students most frequently have difficulty with. The interactive exercises are designed to emulate the experience of writing and struggling to spell correctly, and to avoid presenting incorrect spellings or sounding out words in an unrealistic manner.
ESP also includes a guide to effective punctuation and is a companion app to our Academic Writing in English (AWE) and interactive Grammar of English (iGE) apps. A version for Android will be published later this year.
For more information on the Survey’s apps, see
www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/apps
Events
Corpus Linguistics in the South 7
The Survey hosted Corpus Linguistics in the South 7, which focused on spoken language, on Saturday May 31. Organised by Rachele De Felice, the programme included an invited paper by Gunther Kaltenböck (University of Vienna) and other talks:
- What can we do with a (parsed) spoken corpus?, Bas Aarts and Sean Wallis, UCL
- Spoken Corpora: the paradox of transcription, John Kirk, Belfast
- Using subtitle corpora to model aspects of spoken language, Kevin Tang, UCL
- Tracking involvement in university classroom talk: a corpus-based approach, Federica Barbieri, Swansea University
- Using naturalistic corpora to investigate topics in the acquisition of phonology, Sam Green, UCL
- Developing corpora for the visual modality: The case of sign language corpora, Kearsy Cormier and Jordan Fenlon, UCL
- Discursive representation of hunting in interviews, Clyde Ancarno, King’s College
- Problems, solutions & where next? Open discussion led by Rachele De Felice, UCL
Olinco 2014
Bas Aarts and Sean Wallis were both invited speakers to Olinco 2014 in Olomouc, Czech Republic, on 5-7 June. Bas gave a plenary speech on Investigating spoken English syntax and usage and Sean chaired a workshop on corpus linguistics and presented a paper on What might a corpus of spoken data tell us about language?
UK-Russia Linguistic Symposium
Bas Aarts gave a talk entitled Changes in how we speak: the English modal verbs at the UK-Russia Linguistic Symposium (part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture), organised by the British Council and the Russian State University for the Humanities.
Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics
At the time of writing we are preparing for our second Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics which will take place in UCL at the start of July.
Survey seminars during the spring term
27 January, Professor Marc DeWaele, Birkbeck College. Can one swear “appropriately”? A comparison of swearing in English L1 and English LX users.
3 March, Professor Anne Furlong, University of Prince Edward Island,
Relevance theoretic perspectives on performance as adaptation.
Bas Aarts
Director
June 2014
This page last modified 28 January, 2021 by Survey Web Administrator.