From: Greg Brooks
National Foundation for Educational Research
The Mere
Upton Park
Slough SL1 2DQ
UK
Tel: +44 1 753 574123 ext. 356
Fax: +44 1 753 671706
email: NFER@uk.ac.ulcc.vmsfe
(and address to Greg Brooks by name)
Copied by email to:
Jem Clear <jem@uk.co.collins.cobuild>
Bill Louw <blouw@zimbix.uz.zw>
Anne Wichmann <a.wichmann@uk.ac.uclan>
Antoinette Renouf <ajrenouf@uk.ac.liv>
John Milton <lcjohn@usthk.ust.hk>
Derek Lewis <DRLewis@uk.ac.ex>
Henry S Thompson <"Henry S Thompson"
ht@edu.upenn.cis.unagi>
John Sinclair <j.sinclair@bham.ac.uk>
Adrian Allan <archives@uk.ac.liverpool>
Ben Rampton <rampton_B@slough.thames-valley.ac.uk> -
please publish shortened version in BAAL Newsletter.
Copied by post to:
Dick Hudson, University College London
Jasper Holmes, University College London
Sidney Greenbaum, University College London
Robin Fawcett, University of Wales
Katherine Perera, University of Manchester
Eric Atwell and Colin Souter, University of Leeds
Brian McWhinney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh
Lou Bernard, Oxford Text Archive
Colin Robinson, SCAA
Sue Martin, ESRC Data Archive, University of Essex
Janet Foster, Qualidata Centre, University of Essex
John Williamson, University of Newcastle
R H Davis, University of Leeds
APU WRITING ARCHIVE SAVED
On 28 March 1995 I posted an announcement on the
CORPORA bulletin board, stating that there was a threat to an
archive of 60,000 samples of schoolchildren's writing. Since
1991, the scripts had been held at the University of Liverpool,
but earlier this year it seemed that the University would no
longer be able to hold them, and that without a new home they
might have to be destroyed.
This archive has been SAVED.
The circumstances at the University of Liverpool which posed
the threat have receded, and the archive remains there, and its
immediate future is secure. It is under the physical
custodianship of the University Archivist, Adrian Allan (Tel:
+44 1 51 794 5424; fax: +44 1 51 794 2258; email:
archives@uk.ac.liverpool), and under the research supervision
of Professor Michael Hoey of the Department of English
Language and Literature (Tel: +44 1 51 794 2725/2771; fax:
+44 1 51 794 2739).
For access to the archive for research purposes, enquirers
need to contact
- first, me, for an explanation of the archive and for
drawing samples (for the latter a fee is chargeable)
- then, Michael Hoey, to negotiate research access
- finally, Adrian Allan, to negotiate physical access.
A brief reminder of the nature of the archive:
Annually from 1979 to 1983, and then as a one-off in 1988,
the Assessment of Performance Unit Language Monitoring
Project based here at NFER carried out for the British
Government performance surveys of the attainments in English
of 11- and 15-year-olds (pupils in Years 6 and 11) in England,
Wales and Northern Ireland.
The samples of schools and pupils were nationally
representative, and each of the 12 surveys had a sample of
about 10,000 pupils.
On each occasion, about half of the sample did the writing
section of the survey, tackling 2 or 3 separate writing tasks.
All the approximately 60,000 scripts have been kept, in their
original physical (paper) form; coding them into machine-
stored and -manipulable form remains a longer-term aspiration.
At NFER we have on computer outline background data on
the pupils involved (gender, date of birth, etc.) and on their
schools, together with the impression marks which all the
scripts were given (on a rising 1-7 scale) and the analytic
marks in several detailed categories given to various
subsamples.
I can supply details of the writing tasks which the pupils
undertook, and on which occasions, plus a guide to the whole
archive, and a list of the publications which arose from the
APU Language Monitoring Project.
To date, only one completed research project has been based
on this archive - see Spelling It Out (Greg Brooks, Tom
Gorman and Lesley Kendall, Slough: NFER, 1993), though
John Williamson of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne
(Tel: +44 1 91 222 6526) has just started another.
ALSO, in 1982, 1983 and 1988 only, the surveys included
performance assessments of speaking and listening. Pupils of
both ages were asked to undertake about 3 oracy tasks, and
were impression-marked on the spot by trained teacher-
assessors. The performances were all recorded on C60
audiotapes, and then impression-marked again by a further
panel of teachers. Subsamples were also analytically marked.
The samples of pupils in the oracy surveys were much smaller,
about 1000 on each occasion, making about 6000 tapes in all.
These are also stored at the University of Liverpool, and
arrangements for access are as for the writing archive. None
of the tapes has yet been machine-coded.
I can supply details of the speaking and listening tasks which
particular pupils undertook, plus background data, marks, etc.
Again, so far only one research project has been based on this
part of the archive - see Children's Use of Spoken Standard
English: a short report prepared for the School Curriculum and
Assessment Authority (SCAA Discussion Papers: No 1, by
Richard Hudson and Jasper Holmes, London: SCAA, 1995).
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN USING EITHER THE
WRITING OR THE ORACY ARCHIVE, PLEASE
CONTACT ME, GREG BROOKS, AT NFER.