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wa.amu.edu.pl A DAM M ICKIEWICZ U NIVERSITY IN P OZNA Faculty of English Phonolapsology of graded readers in EFL: PDI profile of a corpus of pedagogical text Wodzimierz Sobkowiak, WA, UAM Slide 2 2 Abstract Wodzimierz Sobkowiak & Liliana Piasecka's book Phonolapsology of graded readers in EFL: theory, analysis, application is an attempt to apply the Phonetic Difficulty Index (PDI) to a corpus of graded e-reader texts written by Reading A-Z (RA-Z; http://www.readinga-z.com/) authors for native American children developing their reading skills. In the analysis part of this monograph an in-depth view is taken of the corpus phonolapsological profile: the frequency distributions of PDI values (0-11), codes (61 tags) and code complexes (codegrams) over the entire run of 18 reading proficiency levels, 317 texts, 29966 sentences, and 331905 words.http://www.readinga-z.com In this presentation a subset of the data is approached from one, quantitative, perspective only: that of the global PDI value profile of the entire corpus. It will be shown: (a) how the PDI values grow with reading proficiency levels, (b) how they compare against two other corpora of text: MEDAL and Brown, (c) how these data can be used for pedagogical selection and profiling of texts for the EFL classroom. Slide 3 Contents 1. PDI as a tool 2. RA-Z as a corpus 3. RA-Z texts for EFL? 4. Processing the RA-Z corpus 5. Main RA-Z PDI statistics 6. RA-Z versus Brown and MEDAL 7. PDI text profiling and enhancement 8. Bibliography 3 Slide 4 1. PDI as a tool PDI is a quantitative/qualitative measure of lexico-phonetic difficulty of English words to Polish EFL (Polglish) learners. over a dozen pertinent publications, Sobkowiak & Ferlacka mostlyover a dozen pertinent publications targets mostly advanced learners in its current implementation 12 levels of difficulty (0-11) and 61 phonetic difficulty (phonolapsological) codes, including mostly phonemic and grapho- phonemic problems61 phonetic difficulty (phonolapsological) codes some morphological, prosody and sandhi problems accounted for; almost no allophony (exception: aspiration) completely automatic application to text, based on algorithmic rules takes phonetic and morphosyntactic (POS) information from a word- list based on OALDCE, 3rd ed.word- list presented as a plenary lecture at Accents 2010plenary lecture at Accents 2010 4 Slide 5 2. RA-Z as a corpus "Reading A-Z is among the family of Learning A-Z websites providing affordable, online curriculum resources. Launched in January 2002, Reading A-Z now has more than () 2,500 downloadable books (including English, Spanish, and French versions) and thousands of teaching and learning materials." (http://www.readinga-z.com/about-readinga-z/)http://www.readinga-z.com/about-readinga-z/ "Engaging, developmentally appropriate leveled books at 27 reading levels. Graduated levels of difficulty build students' confidence while increasing comprehension and fluency." (http://www.readinga- z.com/books/leveled-books/)http://www.readinga- z.com/books/leveled-books/ Example: Meet the Pinnipeds 5 Slide 6 3. RA-Z texts for EFL? RA-Z texts are excellent quality pedagogically, and can be adapted for EFL, but EFL learners have other pronouncing needs and wants than American kids, for example because Their pronouncing problems are mainly caused by interference from L1. To address these problems, as they occur in a given text, and provide scaffolding, a tool is needed. This tool has traditionally been the intuition of the teacher and/or textbook author. With PDI the texts can be analyzed and profiled phonolapsologically, and enhanced with a variety of didactic aids. 6 Slide 7 4. Processing the RA-Z corpus reducing the original corpus to raw alphanumeric text, and normalizing in various ways transcribing phonetically and PDI-tagging by consecutive lookups of each word in the lexicon ultimately derived from the third edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (OALDCE),lexicon equipping the corpus with basic statistics for each record: (i) number of PDI difficulties identified, (ii) mean sentence PDI value, (iii) mean word PDI value. example of a processed RA-Z sentence: 7 Slide 8 5. Main RA-Z PDI statistics 18 reading proficiency levels, 317 texts, 29966 sentences, and 331905 words, 94.5 sentences per text, 11.08 words per sentence Mean PDI/word = 1.73 (sd=0.17), per sentence = 18.15 (sd=5.7), per text = 1862.2 (sd=1371.8) Mean PDI/word grows from 1.48 to 1.84 over the 18 reading levels Mean PDI/word growth over 317 texts is approximated by y=0.001x+1.574 The most common PDI-identified phonetic problems are (mean/sentence in brackets): schwa (4.1), word-final voiced obstruent (2.9), British- American contrasts (2.3) 8 Slide 9 6. RA-Z versus Brown and MEDAL 9 Slide 10 7. PDI text profiling and enhancement PDI can be used: on any text: classic corpora, learner corpora, student- generated texts, web content, etc. to annotate/highlight the focal spots of pronouncing difficulty and enhance texts with appropriate resources (glossaries, exercises, feedback, etc.) as a tool for individualised phonetic diagnosis and remedial treatment to evaluate and revise the existing pronunciation syllabi and resource/materials list for phonetic test preparation and evaluation Some examples from my Accents2010 presentationSome examples 10 Slide 11 8. Bibliography Sobkowiak, Wodzimierz & Wiesawa Ferlacka. 2011a. "PDI as a tool of phonetic enhancements to graded e-readers". In Janusz Arabski & Adam Wojtaszek (eds). The acquisition of L2 phonology. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 138-158. (abstract)abstract Sobkowiak, Wodzimierz & Wiesawa Ferlacka. 2011b. "Indeks trudnoci fonetycznej a elektroniczne ksiki RA-Z". In Mirosaw Pawlak & Bartosz Wolski (eds). Wykorzystanie nowoczesnych technologii w dydaktyce jzykw obcych. Konin: Wydawnictwo PWSZ. 103-121. (abstract)abstract Sobkowiak, Wodzimierz & Liliana Piasecka. (in press). Phonolapsology of graded readers in EFL: theory, analysis, application. Pozna: Wydawnictwo UAM. (abstract and the PDI analysis chapter)abstract PDI analysis chapter 11 Slide 12 Thank you! 12