The grammar of conversation in advanced spoken learner English: Learner corpus data and language-pedagogical implications

The present paper focuses on aspects of what has been labelled the ‘grammar of conversation’ in the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999), i.e. syntactic features that are typical of spontaneous spoken language. Specifically, this paper will present some findings of three case studies of lexicogrammatical forms and structures in advanced German learners’ use of spoken English, including verb-noun collocations, the discourse marker you know and performance phenomena such as repetitions and contractions. The case studies are all based on the German component of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI). The linguistic findings are taken as a starting-point for a discussion of language-pedagogical implications and applications, especially with regard to possible ways of teaching and learning the grammar of conversation in the EFL classroom.