LINGUIST List 18.3033: MICASE -- Resources for Researchers/Teachers

LINGUIST List 18.3033

Wed Oct 17 2007

FYI: MICASE -- Resources for Researchers/Teachers

Editor for this issue: F. Okki Kurniawan <okkilinguistlist.org>

Directory 1. Ute Römer, MICASE -- Resources for Researchers/Teachers

Message 1: MICASE -- Resources for Researchers/Teachers
Date: 15-Oct-2007
From: Ute Römer <uroemerumich.edu>
Subject: MICASE -- Resources for Researchers/Teachers
E-mail this message to a friend

Dear All,

The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) is a collection ofmore than 1.7 million words of transcribed speech (almost 200 hours ofrecordings) from the microcosm of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.MICASE contains data from a wide range of situations (152 different speechevents altogether) and a variety of locations across the university. MICASEspeech events include lectures, classroom discussions, lab sections,seminars, advising sessions, and dissertation defenses.

The entire corpus is made freely available through a custom-designed onlinesearch and browse interface at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micase/. In''browse'' mode, you can retrieve (and then read or download) transcriptfiles that match certain pre-selected criteria (e.g. retrieve allHumanities & Arts seminars or all Biological Sciences events in whichnon-native speakers are involved). The ''search'' function allows you tosearch for words and phrases in the whole corpus or in a selected sub-setof files that match certain criteria, and to create concordances thatinclude references to files, full utterances, and speakers. The searchinterface also provides some descriptive statistics for each search term(e.g. number of hits by gender and academic division) and allows users todownload query results in XML or tab-delimited format.

Users who prefer to use MICASE offline with a concordance program of theirchoice (such as MonoConc Pro, WordSmith Tools, AntConc, ConcApp...), canpurchase the full set of 152 transcript files in XML format for a small fee(50 USD for a single-user licence). An order form can be found athttp://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/ordering.htm.

ESL/EFL teachers, discourse analysts, and phonologists/phoneticians (amongothers) may be happy to hear that we have also made available for purchaseon nine CD-ROMs a total of 61 of the original MICASE sound files(approximately 85 hours of speech). Each CD contains between five and ninespeech events, nine to ten hours of recorded speech, and the XML versionsof the speech event transcripts. For further information please seehttp://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/orderaudio.htm. A number ofMICASE sound files are also freely accessible online for listening athttp://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/Audio/index.htm.

And, finally, I should mention some of the resources (created by past andpresent members of the MICASE team and by instructors at the University ofMichigan English Language Institute) that we have posted on the MICASEproject website (http://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/index.htm) andthat may be of interest for (especially EAP) teachers:- The MICASE kibbitzers, each of which contains the discussion of aparticular language problem (e.g. the phrasal verb ''end up'') and its usein academic speech (at http://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/kibbitzer.htm)- MICASE-based EAP/ESL teaching materials, on topics such as Complaining,Introducing a speaker, or Hedging (athttp://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/teaching.htm)- MICASE-based self-study materials for ESL/EAP students (athttp://legacyweb.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/ESL/index.htm).

If you have any questions on these resources or on using MICASE, pleaseemail me or contact the MICASE team at micaseumich.eduPhone: +1 734 763 7133Fax: +1 734 763 0369http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/http://www.uteroemer.comMICASE: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/index.htmMICUSP: http://www.micusp.orgGeneration 1.5: http://www.micusp.org/1.5

Surface mail address:Dr. Ute RömerUniversity of MichiganEnglish Language Institute500 E. Washington StreetAnn Arbor, MI 48104-2028USA

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Text/Corpus Linguistics