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Chapter 16. Common framework, local context, local anchors

How information-structural transfer can help to distinguish within CEFR C2
  • Sanne van Vuuren and Rina de Vries
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Abstract

The differentiation between and within CEFR C1 and C2 is commonly determined by learners’ educational and cognitive development. Linguistic development may, however, also continue to play a subtle role in the shape of L1 information-structural transfer. Our Dutch EFL learner corpus was expected to reveal traces of V2 to SVO information-structural transfer through a higher frequency of pre-subject adverbials functioning as “local anchors”, in comparison with a native-speaker reference corpus. This is confirmed by our statistical analysis. After aligning our data with the CEFR through an Oxford Online Placement Test, we found students’ OOPT scores to be inversely correlated with their use of local anchors. Information-structural transfer is therefore a possible indicator of language development at higher levels of L2 acquisition.

Abstract

The differentiation between and within CEFR C1 and C2 is commonly determined by learners’ educational and cognitive development. Linguistic development may, however, also continue to play a subtle role in the shape of L1 information-structural transfer. Our Dutch EFL learner corpus was expected to reveal traces of V2 to SVO information-structural transfer through a higher frequency of pre-subject adverbials functioning as “local anchors”, in comparison with a native-speaker reference corpus. This is confirmed by our statistical analysis. After aligning our data with the CEFR through an Oxford Online Placement Test, we found students’ OOPT scores to be inversely correlated with their use of local anchors. Information-structural transfer is therefore a possible indicator of language development at higher levels of L2 acquisition.

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