Our group was formed in May 2011 in Klagenfurt and it boasts a wide range of nationalities, ages, backgrounds and research interests. The group is affiliated to the Department of English and American Studies and the Language Testing Centre and is convened by Professor Günther Sigott.

The general aim of the group is to provide better insight into language acquisition, language use, and language evaluation, from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. We are focused on providing answers for these questions by implementing learner language corpus data and relying strongly on computer linguistics and statistics.

Through our cooperation with national educational and scientific bodies and its work on various nationally relevant projects we are allowed insight to Austrian language learning characteristics in their entirety. Also, apart from language learning issues, we undertake research in all related linguistic fields, such as psycholinguistics, general linguistics, and sociolinguistics.

Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Günther Sigott

Guenther.Sigott@aau.at

Mag.a Dr.in Helen Heaney, B.A.

Helen.Heaney@uni-klu.ac.at

Nikola Dobric, M.A.

Nikola.Dobric@uni-klu.ac.at

Mag.a Jutta Götzinger  

Jutta.Goetzinger@uni-klu.ac.at

Mag. Florian Pibal, B.A.

Florian.Pibal@uni-klu.ac.at

Thomas Hainscho

Thomas.Hainscho@uni-klu.ac.at

Apart from the fixed membership, the group also cooperates with colleagues from other Austrian universities, as well as with experts globally. We would also like to invite people who are interested to work with us to contact us.

The ongoing research projects involving the members of the research group include:

- English (E8) Standards Testing Project (Language Testing Centre)

- D4 (German 4) Standards Tests (Language Testing Centre)

- OESD C-Test Anchoring (Language Testing Centre)

- OESD Item-Bank Building (Language Testing Centre)

- Informelle Leistungsmessung (Language Testing Centre)

- IKM English Writing – Validation (Language Testing Centre)

- CASIS – Computer Aided Sense Identification System (Dobric/Hainscho)

- CAARLA – Corpus of Advanced Academic Writing in L2 in Austria (Heaney/Dobric)

Members of the group are also involved in preparing a very comprehensive national test validation project involving a construction of a large Austrian learner language corpus:

- ALLICE – Austrian Learner Language Internet Corpus of English (Klagenfurt Applied Linguistics Research Group)

Due to our strong belief that collaborative interdisciplinary work enhances the quality of research we encourage cooperation with colleagues inside the university and experts worldwide.

Below is only a small selection of most relevant publications by the members of the group. Full lists of publications for individual members can be found on staff members’ individual pages, links to which can be found in the People section above.

- Sigott, G./Köberl, J. (1996) Deletion patterns and C-Test difficulty across languages. In Grotjahn, R. (ed.) 1996. Der C-Test. Theoretische Grundlagen und praktische Anwendungen (Bd.3). Bochum: Brockmeyer.- Sigott, G. (2004) Towards Identifying the C-Test Construct. Frankfurt / M.: Peter Lang.

- Sigott G. (2006) The C-Test: Theory, Empirical Research, Applications / Der C-Test: Theorie, Empirie, Anwendungen. In: R. Grotjahn (ed.) 2006. Language Testing and Evaluation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 260.

- Sigott, G. & H. Cesnik. (2009) Linking the Klagenfurt Item Bank to the CEFR. In Kleppin, K. & A. Berndt (eds.). Sprachlehrforschung: Theorie und Empirie. Festschrift für Ruediger Grotjahn. Frankfurt/M.: Lang.

- Sigott G., Grotjahn R. (2007): Language Testing and Evaluation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlagsgruppe, (12), pp. 276.

- Since 2004: Editor of the book series Language Testing and Evaluation (Peter Lang Putblishers), Frankfurt/M. together with Ruediger Grotjahn, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. 19 monographs published by 2010.

- Dobrić, N. (2008). Corpus and Language Learning. Pedagoška stvarnost, No. 7/8, pp. 753–759. Belgrade: Pedagogical Society of Vojvodina.

- Dobrić, N. (2009). Corpus Approach as the new Paradigm of Language Research. Philologia, No. 6, p. 31–41. Belgrade: Philologia.

- Dobrić, N. (2009). Corpus Approach to Sociolinguistic Research. Škola biznisa, No. 2, pp. 133–136. Novi Sad: Higher School of Professional Business Studies.

- Šolak, Z. & N. Dobrić (2010) Zipf’s Law and Cities. Zbornik Matice srpske za društvene nauke, No. 131, pp. 149–154, Novi Sad: Matica Srpska.

- Dobrić, N. (2010). Theory of Names and Cognitive Linguistics – the Case of the Metaphor. Philosophy and Society, No. 6, p. 31–41. Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory.

- Pibal, F. & Cesnik, H. (2011) Evaluating the Quantity-Quality Trade-off in the Selection of Anchor Items: a Vertical Scaling Approach. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, Vol 16, No 6, pp. 1-12.