Designing a search interface for a Spanish learner spoken corpus: the end-user's evaluation

This article summarizes the evaluation process of an interface under development to consult an oral corpus of learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language. The databank comprises 40 interviews with students with over 9 different mother tongues collected for Error Analysis. XML mark-up is used to code the information about the learners and their errors (with an explanation), and the search tool makes it is possible to look up these errors and to listen to the utterances where they appear. The formative evaluation was performed to improve the interface during the design stage by means of a questionnaire which addressed issues related to the teachers’ beliefs about languages, their opinion about the Error Analysis methodology, and specific points about the interface design and usability. The results unveiled some deficiencies of the current prototype as well as the interests of the teaching professionals which should be considered to bridge the gap between technology development and its pedagogical applications.