| Title |
Lithuanian learners' English: British or American? / |
| Translation of Title |
Lietuvių studentų anglų kalba: britų ar amerikiečių variantas? |
| Authors |
Bikelienė, Lina |
| DOI |
10.15388/Verb.2015.6.8806 |
| Full Text |
|
| Is Part of |
Verbum.. Vilnius : Vilniaus universiteto leidykla. 2015, Nr. 6, p. 29-40.. ISSN 2029-6223 |
| Keywords [eng] |
learner corpora ; varieties of English ; spelling ; prepositions |
| Abstract [eng] |
Two varieties of English, British English and American English, “have a special status as the two principal national varieties of the language” (Algeo 2006, p.1) and are typically used as models for English in a foreign language situation (Trudgill & Hannah 2008). The dominant status of British English in the context of European educational system has been challenged by American English. Previously published studies on the topic of European learners’ preferences and consistent use of one variety yield contradictory results (cf. Larsson 2012, Alftberg 2009). The present paper aims at analysing the preferred variety of English used by Lithuanian students. The data was taken from two Lithuanian subcorpora of the International Corpus of Learner English (LICLE-VU and LICLE-VDU), two Lithuanian parts of the Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE-SUM-LIT and CALE-RPALIT), the corpus of essays of first-year students of English Philology at Vilnius University (AFK1), and a questionnaire completed by 124 students of the Institute of Foreign Languages at Vilnius University. Using quantitative methods, an attempt was made to define the preferred variety based on students’ overt choice as well as their choice of spelling norms and lexical items. The questionnaire was extended to include a task on the use of prepositions. The results of the pilot study provide insights into Lithuanian learners’ use of the two English varieties. |
| Published |
Vilnius : Vilniaus universiteto leidykla |
| Type |
Journal article |
| Language |
English |
| Publication date |
2015 |
| CC license |
|
