A longitudinal corpus of Mexican English learners
*** If you are interested in joining the project, please send us an email to mexicanlearnercorpus@gmail.com
The Mexican Learner Corpus (MexLeC) is a longitudinal collection of oral texts produced by learners of English from Mexican universities. This is a five years postdoctoral project (2020-2025) currently funded by Secretaría de Ciencia, Humanidades, Tecnología e Innovación, (formerly named Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencia y Tecnología) with institutional support of the Facultad de Lenguas de la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México trough a posdoctoral research residence (CVU 482854).
This corpus aims to provide a basis for research on second language acquisition in the Mexican context and for future applications in the design of strategies and materials for English language teaching.
All the participants are University students of bachelor in modern languages (translation and/or teaching). Specifications on their personal profiles such as gender, age, mother tongue and second language learning background and L2 proficiency level are contained in the sheet (learners´profiles) in the data section.
To elicit data it has been designed a 16-minutes interview divided into four parts. The interaction in this interview is one-on-one (interviewer and participant). All the interaction is video-recorded via video call app. Recorded videos are available for research upon request. Interviewers are Mexican Spanish native speakers holding the levels of proficiency B2 and above.
Tasks in the interview are:
Open-ended questions on familiar topics such as family, friends, occupation, and leisure activities (e.g. my free time).
Questions about likes and preferences with some options given in which the participant has to make choices and support them (e.g. coffe or tea?).
Familiar topics personal narratives and a picture-based narrative.
Opinion questions on social, educational, and/or technology issues.
Transcription guidelines have been adapted from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus (Gablasova, Brezina y McEnery, 2019) and the LINDSEI Corpus (Center for English Corpus Linguistics, 2021).