The ability to state and support one’s opinion is very important in L2 communicative skills. It is necessary to examine how L2 speakers express their opinions, particularly in interactive settings. This study focuses on linguistic differences in the expressions of opinions produced by low-intermediate, high-intermediate, and advanced-level speakers. Taking a quantitative corpus-based approach, the study gathered 286 transcripts of face-to-face speaking exams between an examiner (L1 English speaker) and L2 English test takers. Findings will be discussed regarding pragmatic and interactional complexity involved in the expressions of opinion, in addition to insights and ideas for the teaching and assessment of opinion-giving skills.

Speaker: Yejin Jung – a postdoctoral researcher at the Second Language Teaching and Research Center at the University of Utah. She leads the corpus-building projects at the Multilingual Corpus of Second Language Speech and the Written Corpus of Utah Dual Language Immersion. Her interests include pragmatics, corpus linguistics, and L2 teaching and assessment.