CHILDES Polish-English Krupa-Kwiatkowska Corpus

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Citation information

Krupa-Kwiatkowska, M. (1997). Second-language acquisition in the context of socialization: A case study of a Polish boy learning English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by the above reference.

Project Description

This directory contains data from a longitudinal, ethnographic case study of a Polish boy learning English as a second language. The study examined selected aspects of lan-guage acquisition within the context of the child’s socialization in a new culture and microscopic observation as the technique of data collection was therefore considered crucial. These data were collected and transcribed by M. Krupa-Kwiatkowska, from her son, Martin.

They are selected from a 2-year observational record, which started in September 1992, 1 month after the boy first arrived in the United States, and ended in August 1994, during his first summer vacation in Poland. Twenty-two of the 31 sessions videotaped in the United States were transcribed and included in this corpus. Sessions recorded in Poland are still to be transcribed.

Target child & other children

When the observations began, Martin was 6 years and 2 months old and had just arrived in the United States, following his mother, who was there studying towards her doctoral degree in second language education. Two weeks after his arrival in the United States, Martin began to attend first grade in a Buffalo, New York, elementary school. His prior education included 4 years of kindergarten and preschool in Poland, where he was born and brought up until then. Except for sporadic instruction in English at the age of 5, when he was taught approximately 50 to 100 words and short phrases, this was his first encounter with the English language and American culture. Martin was the only child and was raised by his mother. He was born on July 7, 1986.

The other children invited to participate in the play sessions with Martin were selected in such a way as to reflect a plethora of combinations of personal and cultural features that could be potentially accountable for different patterns of interactional behavior. The original criterion for contrasting the boy’s behavior in peer interactions was the availability of language as a medium of interaction. Therefore, three kinds of situations were recorded: (a) the boy’s interactions with American children who spoke only English, (b) the boy’s interactions with Polish-American children who spoke both languages, and (c) the boy’s interactions with a Latin-American girl who spoke Spanish and little English, with very few shared linguistic resources. The data in this corpus include sessions with six children, who were Martin’s most frequent playmates at that time: Basia, Sarah, Scott, Justin, Robert, and Gabi.

• Basia was one year older than Martin. She was Polish and came to the United States a year and a half before the period covered by this report. Her father was a research associate at one of the research institutions in the area. Her family lived in the same neighborhood as Martin, which made their frequent contacts possible. She attended the same elementary school as Martin. She spoke Polish better than English, but, as all the Polish children in the study, preferred to use English in contacts with other bilingual children.
• Sarah was 2 years older than Martin. She was American and spoke only English. She also lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same school as Martin. Her mother was a graduate student at the university where Martin’s mother studied.
• Scott was 2 years older than Martin. He was the youngest child in a Polish-American family. His parents came to the States about 20 years before, settled and established a family. All their children were born in the United States. Although both languages were used in their home, at the time of the study English already prevailed and was the language of communication among the siblings. Scott spoke only English and understood only a little Polish. The family, however, maintained vivid ties with the Polish community in the area.
• Justin was American and spoke only English. He was a year and a half younger than Martin. He was Martin’s close neighbor and thus a frequent guest at the house. His mother was a graduate student at the university.
• Robert was a year older than Martin. He was Polish. His father was a research associate at the University and his family also lived in the same neighborhood. Robert came to the United States at the age of 4, so when the study began, he had already been in the States for over 3 years. Polish was the predominant language used in Robert’s home, although English could also be heard, particularly when addressed to the boy. Robert could speak both Polish and English, but showed preference for English. Martin considered him his best friend.
• Gabi was a year older than Martin and, when the study began, she had been in the United States for 1 year. She lived with her family in the same neighborhood and her mother was a graduate student at the same University as Martin’s mother. She spoke her native language, Spanish, and had just started to pick up some English.

Procedure

The observational sessions were typically held two or three times a month for the time of 1 hour. Most of them took place at Martin’s house and a few at the house of the other child. The children were free to play wherever and whatever they wanted. They could move from one room to another and change the play topic according to their wishes. Although an attempt was made to conduct two to three hourly sessions monthly, the session schedule was not forced, but was dependent upon the boy’s social calendar and followed the events as they occurred. These restrictions often limited the possibility of recording interactional events. Adult intervention was avoided unless asked for or necessary for safety reasons. A tripod was used to avoid adult’s presence when it was not necessary. However, because of high mobility of the children, this was not often possible. All the sessions were videotaped by a person considered most neutral to the situation. Usually it was the parent of the hosting child, and because most sessions took place in Martin’s home, it was typically the researcher herself.

Transcription

Out of these sessions, specimens of about 20 minutes considered to be most “interac-tive” were selected for transcription. Because there were large patches of non-interactive recorded data, such a selection criterion seemed most natural and justified. This material was then transcribed in the CHAT format. The transcripts include a verbatim record of the children’s speech, paying close attention to such conversational features as repetitions, retracings, interruptions, noncompletions, and omissions, and to special forms of linguistic and quasi-linguistic activity, such as word play, syllabification, invented words, and onomatopoeic expressions. Whenever Polish was used, English translation was provided for the utterance. Utterances were transcribed using the standard alphabets of English and Polish, with the omissions of diacritics in Polish, as these were not then available in CHAT. Nonverbal expressions, such as nonsensical or incomprehensible words, whenever pronounced as in English, were transcribed using the UNIBET system. Unless otherwise marked, children’s utterances should be interpreted as being addressed to the other child. Apart from the speech record, incorporated in the transcripts are the nonlinguistic data, involving the record of general activity, paralinguistic behavior, gestures and facial expressions, and other comments. These were transcribed whenever they were judged to constitute a communicative act on the part of the child. The record of paralinguistic behavior includes various kinds of vocalizations, like screams, sighs, groans, laughter, singsong, and the message conveyed by the tone of the voice, when it was apparent.

The following table contains basic information about each file in the corpus:

File	Date	Age	Part	Age	Part. L1	Length
mar01	29-SEP-1992	6;2	Gabi	7;	Spanish	36:00
mar02	04-OCT-1992	6;2	Scott	8;	English	17:30
mar03	04-OCT-1992	6;2	Scott	8;	English	14:30
mar04	10-OCT-1992	6;3	Sarah	8;	English	5:00
mar05	21-FEB-1993	6;7	Gabi	7;	Spanish	22:00
mar06	21-FEB-1993	6;7	Basia	7;7	Polish	17:00
mar07	21-MAR-1993	6;8	Scott	8;	English	5:00
mar08	03-APR-1993	6;8	Sarah	8;	English	21:00
mar09	04-APR-1993	6;8	Robert	7;10	Polish	19:00
mar10	25-APR-1993	6;9	Justin	6;2	English	22:10
mar11	26-JUL-1993	7;0	Justin	6;5	English	16:30
mar12	27-JUL-1993	7;0	Basia	8;1	Polish	17:20
mar13	28-AUG-1993	7;1	Basia	8;2	Polish	22:50
mar14	31-AUG-1993	7;1	Justin	6;6	English	17:00
mar15	10-OCT-1993	7;3	Justin	6;8	English	22:00
mar16	10-OCT-1993	7;3	Robert	8;4	Polish	17:00
mar17	06-NOV-1993	7;3	Scott	9;	English	20:00
mar18	07-NOV-1993	7;4	Basia	8;4	Polish	20:40
mar19	27-DEC-1993	7;5	Justin	6;10	English	20:30
mar20	28-DEC-1993	7;5	Robert	8;7	Polish	20:40
mar21	12-FEB-1994	7;7	Basia	8;7	Polish	19:40
mar22	13-FEB-1994	7;7	Gabi	8;	Spanish	15:20