Latviešu valodas apguvēju korpuss lietojumā: teorētisks un metodoloģisks ieskats

Abstract

Several text corpora have been created in Latvia, including learner corpora. One of the latest projects is the Latvian Language Learner Corpus (LaVA), which contains the works of international students studying in Latvian higher education institutions who are learning Latvian as a foreign language. The texts are morphologically tagged automatically, and learner errors are tagged manually. A sufficient scope of publications is available, which provides the theoretical basis for the creation of Latvian language learner corpora; however, there is a lack of studies or practical methodological guidelines concerning the opportunities for their application, and there is little data about the use of text corpora in language acquisition. The aim of this study is to explain from the theoretical perspective for what purposes learner corpus data may be used, as well as to illustrate the methodological groundwork with examples from the LaVA corpus. Analysis of theoretical literature has demonstrated the functions and meaning of learner corpora in research, and experience with the use of corpora in acquiring a foreign language has been analysed. Examples of the use of the LaVA corpus as a didactic resource have been prepared using Corpus Linguistics methods. The study was conducted within the state research programme project “The Latvian Language”. After studying the functions of learner corpora from the theoretical perspective, it was concluded that the target audience of the LaVA corpus mainly includes teachers of Latvian as a foreign language (LATS), authors of teaching materials, as well as Latvian language learners. To facilitate the use of the LaVA corpus, it is important to have basic knowledge of Corpus Linguistics, an understanding of the theory of language, as well as an understanding of foreign language teaching methodology. LATS teachers can use the LaVA corpus data in the creation of curricula and teaching materials, in the preparation of language proficiency tests, etc. Using the inductive approach in language acquisition, language learners can also become language researchers, can analyse the errors of other learners, etc. Undeniably, the LaVA corpus can be used in broader linguistic research, for example, in contrastive interlanguage analysis, comparing the data of language learners with the data of native speakers or the data of different groups of language learners.