Group items tagged

"Foreign or second language (L2) learning strategies are specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques students use -- often consciously -- to improve their progress in apprehending, internalizing, and using the L2 (Oxford, 1990b). Strategies are the tools for active, self-directed involvement needed for developing L2 communicative ability (O'Malley & Chamot, 1990). Research has repeatedly shown that the conscious, tailored use of such strategies is related to language achievement and proficiency."

VOICE comprises naturally occurring, non-scripted face-to-face interactions in English as a lingua franca (ELF). The recordings made for VOICE are keyboarded by trained transcribers and stored as a computerized corpus. Currently VOICE comprises 1 million words of spoken ELF interactions, equalling approximately 120 hours of transcribed speech. The speakers recorded in VOICE are experienced ELF speakers from a wide range of first language backgrounds. So far, VOICE includes approximately 1250 ELF speakers with approximately 50 different first languages (disregarding varieties of the respective languages). In the initial phase, VOICE focuses mainly, though not exclusively, on European ELF speakers. The ELF interactions recorded cover a range of different speech events in terms of domain (professional, educational, leisure), function (exchanging information, enacting social relationships), and participant roles and relationships (acquainted vs. unacquainted, symmetrical vs. asymmetrical).

"It is designed to give you (and us) information about the way you tackle the tasks of learning a foreign language. This questionnaire is used all over the world. Unlike our other questionnaire, this one can give you information about your own learning techniques, once you have filled in all the questions and evaluate your answers."