Investigating L2 spoken English through the role play learner corpus

This paper aims to contribute to research on spoken learner discourse by showing that learner corpus research can provide useful tools for the investigation of spoken grammar features of Italian university students’ English. We report on an exploratory study carried out at the University of Milan whose aim was to identify two features of spoken English grammar − tails and the discourse markers YES and YEAH − in a learner corpus of role-play interactions. These features were chosen in that they are among those items which do not show up in traditional EFL syllabuses and are thus not explicitly taught in mainstream EFL courses.