Using the full range of data represented in CoTACS can allow for comparisons to be drawn between speakers from different L1 backgrounds, with a range of teaching experiences and lengths of residence in an English-speaking country. Comparisons could also be drawn between TAs teaching different class types (e.g., lecture vs. lab) and in different disciplines (e.g., math vs. communication).

CoTACS can be used by researchers in Applied Linguistics, TESOL, Discourse Analysis, Rhetoric, Phonology, and Pronunciation to study the prosodic characteristics of instructional speech by native and non-native speakers of American English. CoTACS can also be used to address questions pertaining to syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and other areas of TA speech. After downloading the corpus, you can modify or add to the annotations in the downloaded TextGrid files to best suit your needs with regard to examining the relationship between different linguistic variables. 

The prosodically-annotated transcriptions along with the available accompanying audio files can be used to conduct replication studies on the prosodic characteristics of ITA speech. CoTACS data can be used to conduct other analyses of prosodic features as they relate to different linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena. For example, CoTACS can be used to investigate whether the pitch level on discourse marker like differs between native and non-native speech.

CoTACS data has been used to study how prominence placement should mark information status based on predictions of listeners’ expectations about given, new, and contrastive information (Edalatishams, 2022). Research should further examine how prominence affects listeners’ comprehension of speech, and include listener judgements of the impact of prominence (mis)placement on comprehensibility. Riesco-Bernier & Romero-Trillo (2008) found no acoustic differences between new and given information in classroom discourse; so, research can also use the audio files along with the TextGrid files in CoTACS to examine the acoustic features of ATA and ITA speech.

Doing research using CoTACS? Let us know what you are studying; email iedalati@gmu.edu.