Learner English Around the World

Abstract

Abstract Though there is no general agreement on the exact figures, everybody now recognizes that there are now more non-native speakers of English in the world than native speakers. McArthur (1992: 355) speaks of a 2-to-l ratio of non-natives to natives’. In this context, a project such as The International Corpus of English (ICE) is particularly welcome, as in addition to featuring different native varieties of English, it gives non-native varieties of English the place they deserve. How ever, ICE only covers institutionalized varieties of non-native English such as Indian English or Nigerian English. It leaves out a sizeable-arguably the largest group of non-native users of English in the world, i.e. foreign learners of English. It was to do justice to this rapidly expanding group of English speakers that I put forward a proposal to complement ICE with a corpus of learner English, a suggestion which was welcomed by Sidney Greenbaum. This resulted in the launch of The International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) in late 1990. In this paper I will first situate the corpus within the other non-native varieties of English. Then I will describe the corpus in detail, paying particular attention to issues of meth odology. I will briefly illustrate the insights to be derived from a computer-based investigation of learner lexis, grammar, and discourse features. Finally, I will high light the pedagogical advantages of a corpus-based approach to EFL.