TalkTogether Blog

Contributing Author: Donna Pamella Gonzales This article was written for the 2021 Corpus Roundtable event hosted by the TalkTogether team. I love to read books. I grew up with the likes of Dr. Seuss and the Little Golden Books, then transitioned to mystery and romance pocket books, until I found myself reading thicker romance and thriller novels as well as the huge volumes of encyclopedias. I recall finding myself totally immersed in a story that nothing, and I mean nothing, even the calls of my mom to eat, could distract me. I would read anywhere–even in a moving vehicle or in the dark–and any time I got the chance. The library became a safe haven for me. Reading for me became a source of comfort and relaxation, of trivia and general knowledge (Of course, reading for school was a totally different thing!). As I got involved in the field of education and research, especially in the development and management of instructional materials, books became more than just a source of enjoyment...

Contributing Author: Mehar Kahlon This article was written for the 2021 Corpus Roundtable event hosted by the TalkTogether team. Test validity typically refers to whether a test measures what it aims to measure. Phrases such as “a valid test” or “a validated test” imply that validity is a quality of the test itself and implicitly places the burden of achieving validity on test developers rather than users [ 1 ]. Because testing involves judgement on the underlying abilities of individuals based on their test performance, a consideration of their lived experiences is necessary to secure fairness in measurement. In this piece, I aim to highlight some of the important considerations in validating language tests in low-and middle-income countries, particularly multilingual India. A word definition test (also called an expressive vocabulary test) will be used to illustrate these considerations and linkages will be made to child-directed print corpora as a potential resource for guiding th...

Contributing Author: Aneyn M. O’Grady This article was written for the 2021 Corpus Roundtable event hosted by the TalkTogether team. Can a book help a child navigate the world outside of one? The second day of the Child Directed Corpus Virtual Roundtable (1st July, 2021) focused on the ways children’s books can be a research resource for exploring how children encounter language. What became clear from talks and presentations was the importance of how the type of language found in children’s text differs from child-directed speech. For example, Yaling Hsiao flagged in their Roundtable talk how the syntax and grammar found in children’s books is more complex than what children may hear every day. The Roundtable also discussed what makes language in child fiction unique, with Kate Nation noting during a panel discussion that fiction gives children a special opportunity to talk directly about internal states. Discussions from Day 2 suggested that reading fiction books can be meaningf...