The Generation 1.5 Project
This project is the first larger scale empirical study of Generation 1.5 writers. Our corpus, in addition to a second one under development consisting of a collection of examination essays, may offer some insight to researchers in Applied Linguistics, and more specifically to those in Undergraduate ESL writing, as to which aspects of language which are acquired in informal (rather than in formal foreign language classroom) contexts. Thus the results of the study will provide some empirical evidence of Generation 1.5 written language use among a specific population.
The Generation 1.5 project was launched in 2006 by a small group of researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) English Language Institute (ELI). We are collecting texts from writers who are just starting their academic careers at the university, specifically 1st and 2nd year undergraduates, who speak a variety of Korean or Chinese at home. Ultimately, the aim of this data collection is to provide an empirical basis for developing recommendations for writing/language instruction specialized for the Generation 1.5 group.
Read about the goals and ideas behind the project.
Research outcomes from the Generation 1.5 project.
The people behind the project
MICASE is a corpus of spoken English is a unique collection of a large number of speech events recorded at a large American research university.
MICUSP is a corpus of advanced student writing from 16 disciplines at the University of Michigan.
The JSCC is a small corpus of conference transcripts, made available for the study of academic discourse in specialized contexts.
This project is the first larger scale empirical study of Generation 1.5 writers.
On these pages you find information about our research activities and training we provide in corpus analysis.