Differences in English Vocabulary Use: Insights from Spoken Learner Corpus and Native Speaker Corpus

Abstract

Comparisons of native and non-native speakers’ written and spoken productions enable researchers to investigate the points of divergence and parallelism between the two types of texts. Focusing on the use of two functional categories (articles and prepositions) and three content categories (nouns, adjectives and verbs), this study compares a small, spoken NNS corpus (10973 words) with a smaller, spoken NS corpus (2331 words). Participants in both groups were assigned a speaking task, the result of which produced the NNS and NS corpora and those corpora were analyzed quantitatively with the help of computer software titled Concordance. The results show that due to the limited number of choice, there was a large overlap in the use of articles and prepositions; close similarity between the use of nouns and verbs; and a remarkable difference in the use of adjectives