This study examined the validity of data collected from a novel online story retell task. The task was specifically designed for use by junior school teachers with the support of speech-language therapists or literacy specialists. The assessment task was developed to monitor children's oral language progress in their first year at school as part…

This paper examines the usage frequency of phonetically reduced modals (i.e. "gonna," "wanna," "gotta") in Present-day English. It is assumed that in distinct sociolinguistic and discourse contexts, the use of reduced modals is dynamic. To collect the data, there are five corpora used in this study, "Corpus of…

This is the book of abstracts for the conference held in 2017 entitled: ''METADISCOURSE ACROSS GENRES: MAPPING INTERACTION IN SPOKEN & WRITTEN DISCOURSES'', also known as MAG2017. The 1st International Conference on Metadiscourse Across Genres took place in METU Northern Cyprus Campus, Cyprus between 30 March-1 April 2017 with the…

The Nga Manu Speech Contest has grown to be one of the biggest and most positive events for New Zealand secondary school students where competitors articulate their thoughts and aspirations in both Maori and English. The contest is acknowledged as an avenue that enhances language and cultural development amongst Maori youth, yet no formal…

Examined the frequency and type of pragmatic devices used in oral New Zealand English, based on analysis of the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. It found "you know" and "eh" were both found more frequently in working-class than middle-class speech. Other age, gender, and class distinctions are discussed. (45…

A study of the use of the Maori language among residents of the North Island of New Zealand drew on data from interviews with members of 6,470 Maori families over the period 1973-1979. Over 6,915 heads of household gave data concerning their knowledge of the language, their use of it in a variety of situations, and their attitudes and experiences…