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ELISA English Language Interview Corpus as a Second-Language Application |
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The ELISA corpus is being developed at the University of Tuebingen (Dept of Applied English Linguistics, AEL) and the University of Surrey (Dept of Languages and Translation Studies, LTS) as a resource for language learning and teaching, and interpreter training. It contains interviews with native speakers of English. They talk about their professional career (e.g. in tourism, politics, the media or environmental education). We are very grateful to all speakers for their kind contributions. This demo website contains selected materials from the ELISA corpus. ( You can use our Concordancer (written in PERL) on text versions of all corpus files. It can be utilized to extract KWIC concordances with variable context length, sentence concordances and word counts. The documentation may be read here (ascii file). Sections:
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Judith considers herself a true 'international citizen'. Originally from California (US), she used to work as a documentary film maker in Sweden and now lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she works as an arts therapist and teaches at the University. | |
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Jerry Easley is the (former) president of the Chamber of Commerce in Santa Fe (New Mexico, US). He talks about the chamber's mission and gives insights into the economic issues, developments and challenges which keep the Santa Fe region going. | |
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David Pfeffer is one of eight city councillors of the community of Santa Fe (New Mexico, US). He explains how the city council works and gives some examples of the public and economic issues he deals with. | |
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Nora and Philip live in New Mexico (US). Many years ago, they founded a very special kind of bank, the Permaculture Credit Union. They talk about the 'perseverance' they needed to set up their business, about their aims and values and the projects they finance and support. | |
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Rob works in the IT industry in Scotland and is currently creating a chip which generates music for mobile phones. Originally from the South-East of England, he also talks about how the Eurostar changed his life and ponders the differences between England and Scotland. | |
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Paul is originally from England but he lives in Edinburgh. In 'real life' he is a translator and English teacher, but he also plays Scottish music in a Ceilidh band. He talks about his jobs, his students, the role of English as a lingua franca and, of course, about the Ceilidh. | |
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Bishopswood Centre is an environmental education centre in the West Midlands (UK). One of the project managers talks about the aims of the centre, the projects it is involved in and the educational programmes it runs. | |
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Sue is a teacher and Forest School leader at Bishopswood Centre (UK). She works with young children. She talks about the children who come to Forest School, how she gets them to enjoy nature, and about the rewards of working with children. | |
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Chris works in Yulara resort in the Northern Territory (Australia). He is a tour guide at Uluru. He talks about his life in Yulara, his daily routines, the people he meets and the people who are the traditional owners of Uluru. | |
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Phil lives in Edinburgh, and his true passion is playing the guitar. He makes a living as a guitar teacher, has travelled the world and has been involved in much social work. So, just 'tune in' to Phil's wonderful Scottish accent and listen to his story. | |
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Dieter lives in county Wicklow (Ireland) where he rents out horse-drawn caravans to people on holiday. He talks about how his business has grown and how tourism has changed since he started about 30 years ago. | |
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Harold is the owner of the 'Broken Saddle' horse-back riding company in New Mexico (US). He tells the story of his company, talks about his clients and ... his horses. Then he lets us join one of his riding lessons. | |
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Formerly the home of the Duke of Sutherland, the Culag Hotel in Lochinver is now a family run hotel. The owner, Ken, originally had a career as an engineer, which led him from Edinburgh to Dubai, before finally settling in the beautiful Northwest of Scotland. | |
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Victoria works at Oxford University. Using her experience of working as a language teacher and in the publishing industry, she collects and catalogues high-quality web-based resources for teaching and research in the humanities. | |
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Linda manages the computer helpdesk at Oxford University. She talks about her experience at an IT lab in Germany and how she applied this in Oxford, and she gives us a glimpse of the changing world of IT and the challenges Oxford IT services are facing. | |
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Barbara from Santa Fe (New Mexico, US) uses old Navaho rugs and other materials to turn ordinary denim wear into ethnic-style clothing. She explains how she started her business and what is involved in making and selling these clothes. | |
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Larry Delgado is the Mayor of Santa Fe (US). In an interview with a local radio station he talks about public and economic issues the city is facing - from managing Santa Fe's tight water resources to road construction works and the preparations for the Indian Market. | |
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Lou Burnard is the assistant director of OUCS and a corpus linguist of international reputation. He talks about his long-standing interest in humanities computing, the early days of computing, the modern challenges and his vision for research technology support. | |
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'Seeing the Light' is a photo agency in Birmingham (UK). Its owner, a photographer, talks about how and why she started her company, about past and current projects, marketing strategies and plans for the future. | |
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Anne works for an Edinburgh-based environmental consultancy who collaborates with Scottish Water. She talks about the company's water reservoirs, the water situation in Scotland and her related PhD project at Edinburgh University. | |
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Heather is in the travel business. Originally from America, she now lives in Sydney (Australia). She has worked in publishing and advertising, covering e.g. Bermuda and the Caribbean, South and Central America and the Pacific. | |
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The Rainforest Habitat in Port Douglas (Queensland, Australia) is an educational experience. The general manager talks about the wildlife in the rainforest and explains what it takes to run this very special zoo. | |
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Archie has been a rancher all his life. Putting the development of his farm into a wider historical context, he talks about how he used to make a living from cattle farming and wonders why things have changed so much over time. | |
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The Institute of Governance is part of Edinburgh University and was set up as a 'think tank' for the Scottish Parliament. The institute's secretary talks about current projects and her role in them, and explains the differences between the parliaments in London and Edinburgh. | |
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Acknowledgements, availability and copyright
Acknowledgements: The project has been supported by the University of Tuebingen. The video interviews have been carried out and recorded by Sabine Braun, Stefanie Hahn, Petra Hoffstaedter and Kurt Kohn. The speakers have agreed to the use of the materials for non-commercial research and education purposes.
Availability of the ELISA corpus: The ELISA corpus is made available by the Department of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Tuebingen. It is freely available at this website for study, teaching and research purposes, and copies of the transcripts may be distributed, as long as this statement of availability appears in the text. However, if any portion of this material is to be used in educational presentations and publications, permission must be obtained in advance. Commercial use of any form is excluded. For further information about permissions, please contact Dr. Sabine Braun at s.braun(at)surrey.ac.uk.
Copyright of the ELISA corpus: Department of Applied English Linguistics, University of Tuebingen.