Corpus-aided English Speaking Learning and Teaching System

In this project, we developed a corpus-aided spoken teaching and learning platform which aims to help teachers, learners and researchers have a better understanding of the spontaneous speech features and problems that Chinese English learners have. An English Speech corpus and an online flipped corpus-aided spoken English training programme are the key elements of this project. Over 80 sets of spontaneous data, including IELTS spoken speech and classroom presentation data produced by learners with different English proficiency levels, were collected, transcribed and annotated for four features (fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation). Leaners and language teachers can identify the potential spoken features they or their students may have through getting access to the authentic data as examples for their spoken English learning.

An online flipped corpus-aided spoken English teaching and learning course for general English learners and IELTS candidates was designed and implemented. Suggested corpus-aided tasks and lesson plans were provided, and frontline teachers can get access to the materials and implement them in their speaking teaching. This project has a pioneering role in corpus linguistics and online spoken English teaching and learning by contributing new knowledge, materials, resources and methods for language learners and teachers to meet the current global situation.