IELTS Research Reports

Tim Moore, Janne Morton and Steve PriceGapped summary 2Complete the summary of Paragraph G below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passagefor each answer.Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.A linguist can use a corpus to comment objectively on 37…… . Some corpora include a variety oflanguage while others are focused on a 38……… . The length of time the process takes will affectthe 39……. of the corpus. No corpus can ever cover the whole language and so linguists often findthemselves relying on the additional information that can be gained from the 40…. of those whospeak the language concerned.Relevant section of reading passage:OBTAINING LINGUISTIC DATAA representative sample of language, complied for the purpose of linguistic analysis, isknown as a corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about thefrequency of usage, and it provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Itsrange and size are variable. Some corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, takingextracts from many kinds of texts; others are extremely selective, providing a collection ofmaterial that deals only with a particular linguistic feature. The size of the corpus dependson practical factors, such as the time available to collect, process and store the data:it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few minutes ofspeech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis;by contrast corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An importantprinciple is that all corpora, whatever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, andalways need to be supplemented by data derived from the intuitions of native speakers ofthe language, through either introspection or experimentation.Correct responses:37 = frequency of usage38= particular linguistic feature39= size40 = intuitionsSample 3.2: Gapped summary sample - without options bankLevel of engagementEach item in the gapped summary tasks, it was noted, was focused on the locating of quite specificinformation. For example, in responding to items in Sample 3.1 above, candidates need to identify thevarious ‘protective’ measures that have been employed in the airport project discussed (sea walls, island,geotextile). On this basis, we would say that the level of engagement with the text is fairly local.However, it was noted that in some Gapped summary tasks individual items could not be treatedentirely in isolation, but instead needed to be considered in relation to the whole summary text, as wellas to the relevant section of the reading passage. Thus, for example, in completing items 12 and 13below (from Sample 3.1), one is not able to confirm the answer to 12 without looking further on in thereading passage to establish the likely response to 13.210 www.ielts.org