[Corpora-List] Written Essay Corpus (graded?)

[jasper holmes]

Dear Scott

The BAWE (British Academic Written English) corpus, which I've
mentioned here before, is now complete. We're waiting for deposition
with the OTA and UKDA to go through, and when it does these bodies
will be responsible for distribution, but we can arrange for copies of
the corpus to be supplied for research purposes before then.

It consists of 2800 assignments submitted to one of 3 UK universities
and graded above 65%. Unfortunately for you, we don't have any lower
grades, but those we do have are graded in two bands: 'Merit' and
'Distinction'.

Not all contributors are native speakers (though they are all
proficient writers of English), but we have recorded the 1st language
in each case. There are 1950 assignments by native speakers.

Collection was across some 35 departments and 4 years (Y1-3
undergraduate, Masters).

The corpus is avaiable in xml and txt format; the xml files have
contextual information in the file headers, and textual information
(sections, paras, sentences, lists, tables etc) inline with the text.

Jasper

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 4:32 PM, scott crossley <sacrossley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Corpora List,
>
>  We are trying to track down a corpus (or corpora) of student essays
>  written in English. Ultimately, the best scenario is if they were also
>  graded,based on specific criteria, but we realize this is unlikely. We
>  are looking for any and all proficiency levels and grade levels
>  (through college) and are more interested in first language samples
>  then second language samples (we have a copy of the ICLE). Any help
>  you might have in tracking such a collection would be greatly
>  appreciated. Free corpora are great, but we are willing to buy the
>  corpora as well
>
>  Thanks so much one and all,
>
>  --
>  Scott Crossley, Ph.D.
>  Linguistics/TESOL
>
>  Department of English
>  Mississippi State University
>  http://www.msstate.edu/dept/english/esl.html
>  (662) 325-2355
>
>  Institute for Intelligent Systems
>  University of Memphis
>  http://mnemosyne.csl.psyc.memphis.edu/iis/
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Corpora mailing list
>  Corpora at uib.no
>  http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora
>

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