English Profile Corpus Update
Fiona Barker
Cambridge ESOL
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CEPC and CACE
1. Cambridge English Profile
Corpus
2. Cambridge Academic Corpus of
English
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Cambridge English Profile Corpus
The online data collection portal has been in use for 2.5
years, with a new portal and tasks ready for trialling.
All learners complete:
• a language-learning/background questionnaire
• writing tasks available to all learners, regardless of
their (teacher-assigned) proficiency level
Resulting in written responses (2/3 per learner) and
associated metadata.
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Data collected to-date
As of January 2012 we have:
• 1.8 million words from 4078 learners (320k last
month)
• Most data from learners assigned to B levels
then C then A levels
• 41 L1s, seven with >100 learners who’ve
completed all tasks
• 11,400 responses, between 3 and 1217 per
task (due to new task sets being introduced)
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Total words collected per CEFR level
1300000
Numberof
ofwords
words
Number
1200000
1100000
1100000
1000000
1000000
900000
900000
800000
800000
700000
700000
A1/A2
A1/A2
B1/B2
B1/B2
600000
600000
500000
500000
C1/C2
C1/C2
400000
400000
300000
300000
200000
200000
100000
100000
0
0
Completed
Completed
Questions
Questions
Abandoned
Abandoned
Questions
Questions
Total
Total
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Task popularity
§ Task set 1: 8176 responses – level A students
had two pairs to choose 2 tasks from, B and C
level students had three pairs to choose 3 tasks
from
§ Task set 2: 3183 – same for all levels (see
following sample)
§ Task set 3: 60 – same for all levels (just
introduced)
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Sample tasks from
set 2
Look at the pictures.
Write a letter to the
camera shop.
Complain about your
camera
(412 responses)
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Choose 3 or more of
the pictures and
write a story.
(420 responses)
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For this section, choose either
picture and write whatever you
feel like writing!
(427 + 634 responses)
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New data collection portal
• New functional multi-level task set with task cycling (20 per
L1 per function).
• Allows longitudinal data to be collected more easily.
• Learners can upload a favourite piece of work and/or
participate in a forum with other learners.
• Corpus interface is under development.
• We aim to validate the level of data already collected and
collect further data to balance what we currently have.
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2. Cambridge Academic Corpus
of English
• CACE was initiated Summer 2011 by Cambridge ESOL in
collaboration with CUP.
• This will help us to identify the nature of academic English,
including how native and non-native speakers deal with the
challenge.
• To enable the description of academic language in relation
to L1, academic level, domain, etc.
• So that we can specify the C levels (and beyond) for
academic contexts.
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What will CACE contain?
• CACE will contain domain-specific writing collected from
sixth form and university students in various contexts.
• Non-native and native writing will be systematically
compared by domain & level.
• CACE will inform English Profile, test development, and
materials development.
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CEPC and CACE
Next steps
Cambridge English Profile Corpus
•
Validation of level assignment; roll-out of new
portal; development of new tasks; access to
Sketch Engine for EP researchers; access to
online samples for the wider community.
Cambridge Academic Corpus of English
•
Recruit project manager; finalise design; begin
data collection; initial exploration of data.
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