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Learner Corpora

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A Practical Handbook of Corpus Linguistics

Abstract

This chapter deals with learner corpora, that is, collections of (spoken and/or written) texts produced by learners of a language. It describes their main characteristics, with particular emphasis on those that are distinctive of learner corpora. Special types of corpora are introduced, such as longitudinal learner corpora or local learner corpora. The issues of the metadata accompanying learner corpora and the annotation of learner corpora are also discussed, and the challenges they involve are highlighted. Several methods of analysis designed to deal with learner corpora are presented, including Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, Computer-aided Error Analysis and the Integrated Contrastive Model. The development of the field of learner corpus research is sketched, and possible future directions are examined, in terms of the size of learner corpora, their diversity, or the techniques of compilation and analysis. The chapter also features representative corpus-based studies of learner language, representative learner corpora, tools and resources related to learner corpora, and annotated references for further reading.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://merlin-platform.eu/. Accessed 22 May 2019.

  2. 2.

    https://korpling.german.hu-berlin.de/falko-suche/. Accessed 22 May 2019.

  3. 3.

    https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc/cecl/proceed.html. Accessed 22 May 2019.

  4. 4.

    https://childes.talkbank.org/. Accessed 22 May 2019.

  5. 5.

    www.flloc.soton.ac.uk/. Accessed 22 May 2019.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université catholique de Louvain, Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Gaëtanelle Gilquin

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  1. Gaëtanelle Gilquin
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Correspondence to Gaëtanelle Gilquin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. FNRS Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, Language and Communication Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Magali Paquot

  2. Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Stefan Th. Gries

Further Reading

Further Reading

  • Granger, S. 2012. How to use foreign and second language learner corpora. In Research methods in second language acquisition: A practical guide , eds. Mackey, A., and Gass, S.M., 7–29. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing.

After briefly introducing learner corpora, this paper clearly presents the different stages that can be involved in a learner corpus study: choice of a methodological approach, selection and/or compilation of a learner corpus, data annotation, data extraction, data analysis, data interpretation and pedagogical implementation.

  • Díaz-Negrillo, A., Ballier, N., and Thompson, P., eds. 2013. Automatic treatment and analysis of learner corpus data . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

This edited volume covers many important methodological issues related to learner corpora, such as the question of interoperability, multi-layer error annotation, automatic error detection and correction, or the use of statistics in learner corpus research.

  • Granger, S, Gilquin, G., and Meunier, F., eds. 2015. The Cambridge handbook of learner corpus research . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the different facets of learner corpus research, including the design of learner corpora, the methods that can be applied to study them, their use to investigate various aspects of language, and the link between learner corpus research and second language acquisition, language teaching and natural language processing.

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Gilquin, G. (2020). Learner Corpora. In: Paquot, M., Gries, S.T. (eds) A Practical Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46216-1_13

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