International Corpus Of Learner English Research Articles

Do Learners Acquire the Functions of the English Passive Along with Its Form? Case Study of Armenian Learners

The study investigates the impact of learners’ mother tongue (L1) on second language (L2) acquisition, with a focus on Armenian learners of English. By analyzing the use of the passive voice in both native English speakers’ and Armenian learners’ corpora, the study aims to address a research gap concerning the influence of L1 on the acquisition of form but not function in the Armenian context. The study hypothesizes that the pragmatic aspect of the passive voice in Armenian would influence its usage in English. Utilizing Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, both quantitative and qualitative research methods were employed to analyze the Armenian learners’ corpus (compiled in line with International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE)) and a sub-corpus of the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOUVAIN). The analysis revealed that Armenian learners effectively utilized the passive voice without errors, and their pragmatic usage closely resembled that of native speakers. This finding contradicts the hypothesis that learners struggle with acquiring the functions of grammar issues.

A Bayesian probabilistic analysis of the use of English modal verbs in L2 writing: Focusing on L1 influence and topic effects

Modal verbs, with their multifaceted semantic nuances and varied grammatical configurations, present notable challenges for L2 learners and regularly intrigue L2 researchers. This study attempts to investigate and compare how English modal verbs are used by L2 learners from different L1 backgrounds. By exploring the Turkish and Chinese learners’ subcorpora of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), this work scrutizes the overall frequencies of nine core English modal verbs as grouped into three major semantic classes along with the influential lexico-syntatic variables that are semantic classes of collocated verbs, grammatical patterns and subject pronominality. The results of a Bayesian probabilistic analysis show that both the Turkish and Chinese learners primed similar modal verbs and constructional preferences without topic as the normalizing factor. While the broader analysis reveals no statistically significant divergences between these two learner groups in English modal verb preferences, a pronounced contextual influence is evident when the dataset narrows to essays on a unified theme. This nuanced shift underscores the intricate relationship between essay topics and linguistic structures, thus emphasizing the pivotal role of context in modal verb usage.

Computer learner corpora, or how can we turn our students' interlanguage into a resource for EFL research and teaching?

The essay presents recent developments in the field of learner corpora, with special reference to some written corpora that have been collected in European academic contexts. One particular corpus, "The International Corpus of Learner English" (ICLE), is dealt with in more detail since it allows cross-linguistic comparison among 11 different national subcorpora. The research that has already been carried out on ICLE ranges from ad hoe case studies of mistakes made by specific groups of learners to wider and more systematic investigations of areas of difficulty and of features of "foreign-soundings" across different mother tongue groups, and from the discussion of corpus design criteria to the empirical testing of Second Language Acquisition hypotheses and findings. Using an already existing learner corpus, joining a project in progress or building a new learner corpus appear to be useful and challenging enterprises which may help reconcile research and teaching needs especially in the field of English, which is the most highly required foreign language in European universities.

A trajetória da compilação de um corpus de aprendiz: um desafio metodológico compensador

ABSTRACT Corpus compilation is a challenging research endeavor that many researchers decide to pursue. Few learner corpora, however, can be easily accessed (e.g.,the International Corpus of Learner English), and none of them carry a variety of text registers written by English learners at different proficiency levels studying in the Brazilian university context. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present the compilation of a learner corpus, much needed in our research and teaching context, pointing out the advantages of building this type of corpus for the understanding of learners’ needs as well as for pedagogical decision-making based on sound data. Presenting a detailed rationale of the corpus compilation, this article reveals the various decisions made in order to guarantee that fair comparisons can be made. To exemplify the value of building a carefully designed corpus, results of previous studies are compared. Some of the conclusions reached refer to the need for discipline-specific tasks to propel writing proficiency and for authorship skills to be developed in English for Academic Purposes classes to foster academic success.

Is core vocabulary a friend or foe of academic writing? Single-word vs multi-word uses of thing

Core vocabulary items (e.g. thing, way) are often viewed as the enemy of effective academic writing, and style guides and textbooks often advise against using them. However, their bad reputation seems to stem from a single-word perspective that ignores the rich phraseological units that such items tend to figure in. In this study, we focus on the core vocabulary lemma thing to investigate the extent to which a phraseological approach can redeem its reputation. We look at learner essays from ten different first-language backgrounds from the International Corpus of Learner English and compare these to reference corpora from the endpoints of the informal-formal continuum: the Spoken BNC2014 and the Corpus of Academic Journal Articles. The results show that a phraseological approach indeed provides a more nuanced view of the core lemma thing: it is used in a wide variety of multi-word units, many of which common in academic writing. Although some signs of novice production are evident in the learners’ writing, their use is closest to that of the expert academic writers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of phraseology in vocabulary lists used in teaching and assessment.

Examining individual variation in learner production data: A few programmatic pointers for corpus-based analyses using the example of adverbial clause ordering

ABSTRACTThis study examines the variable positioning of a finite adverbial subordinate clause and its main clause with the subordinate clause either preceding or following the main clause in native versus nonnative English. Specifically, we contrast causal, concessive, conditional, and temporal adverbial clauses produced by German and Chinese learners of English with those produced by native speakers. We examined 2,362 attestations from the Chinese and German subsections of the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger, Dagneaux, Meunier, & Paquot, 2009) and from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (Granger, 1998). All instances were annotated for the ordering, the subordinate clause type, the lengths of the main and subordinate clauses, the first language of the speakers, the conjunction used, and the file it originated from (as a proxy for the speaker producing the sentence so as to be able to study individual and lexical variation). The results of a two-step regression modeling protocol suggest that learners behave most nativelike with causal clauses and struggle most with conditional and concessive clauses; in addition, learners make more non-nativelike choices when the main and subordinate clause are of about equal length.

How Learner Corpus Research can inform language learning and teaching

AbstractThis study aims to exemplify how language teaching can benefit from learner corpus research (LCR). To this end, this study determines how L1 and L2 English speakers with diverse L1 backgrounds differ with respect to adjective amplification, based on theInternational Corpus of Learner English(ICLE) and theLouvain Corpus of Native English Essays(LOCNESS). The study confirms trends reported in previous research, in that L1 speakers amplify adjectives more frequently than L2 English speakers. In addition, the analysis shows that L1 and L2 English speakers differ substantially with respect to the collocational profiles of specific amplifier types and with respect to awareness of genre-specific constraints on amplifier use, and that even advanced L2 speakers tend to be unaware of stylistic constraints on adjective amplification because they model their academic output based on patterns generalized from informal conversation. These findings are useful for language teaching in that the data can be used to target L1-specific difficulties experienced by L2 English speakers.

Concessive Connectors though and however in Writing of Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

This paper focuses on connectors though and however in Serbian EFL writing. The logical relationship established by the two connectors is concessive, the concept of concessiveness ranging from the very transparent cases, referred to as the strong ‘contrary-to-expectations’ implicature, to less transparent ones, referred to as the weak ‘contrary-to-expectations’ implicature. Besides, the two lexemes, though and however, can be used in other functional roles in the contemporary language; while though is more frequently used as a conjunction than as a connector, however is more frequently used as a connector than as an adverb.The research followed Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 2015). The data includes the three corpora of argumentative essays: a non-native one, ICLE-SE, belonging to the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium), and two native ones, British English and American English subsets of the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS-BE and LOCNESS-AE, respectively). The research is mainly qualitative.The results have shown that though is almost never used as a connector in the non-native corpus—only 1.7% of the total number of uses occupy this functional role. In the native corpora, conversely, every second or third use is as a connector. The case of however is different. Although it is almost exclusively used as a connector in all the three corpora, there are striking differences in its uses. The initial position is strongly favoured by non-native writers, unlike native writers, who use the medial and the final positions considerably more frequently. Apart from the striking differences, there is also a similarity in the three corpora: there are cases of however directly following the so-called ‘run-on’ comma, which is seen as non-grammatical in the referential descriptive grammars.Finally, we conclude that logical connectors though and however are challenging for both descriptive linguistics and applied domains. It is quite expected, then, that they are a very demanding part of the language learning process, as the research has shown. It is suggested that the research results should be complemented by the classical contrastive analysis, focusing on the two connectors and their equivalents in Serbian.

Phrasal Verbs in Learner English: A Corpus-based Study of Lithuanian and Polish Learners of English

Phrasal verbs, though very common in the English language, are acknowledged as difficult to acquire by non-native learners of English. The present study examines this issue focusing on two learner groups from different mother tongue backgrounds, i.e. Lithuanian and Polish advanced students of English. The analysis is conducted based on Granger’s (1996) Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis methodology, investigating the Lithuanian and Polish components of the International Corpus of Learner English, as well as the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays. The results obtained in the study prove that both learner groups underuse phrasal verbs compared with native English speakers. It is concluded that this could be due to the learners’ limited repertoire of phrasal verbs as they employ significantly fewer phrasalverb types than native speakers. Furthermore, it is noticed that learners face similar stylistic, semantic and syntactic difficulties in the use of this language feature. In particular, the analysis shows that such errors might be caused by native language interference, as well as the inherent complexity of phrasal verbs. The present study not only helps to account for the challenges that are common to those language groups which lack phrasal verbs in their linguistic repository, but also provides insights into the understanding of advanced learner language.

Effects of L2 usage and L1 transfer on Turkish learners’ production of English verb-argument constructions

Using data from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and the British National Corpus (BNC), this article examines what Turkish learners of English know about a set of frequent verb-argument constructions (VACs, such as ‘V with n’ as illustrated by ‘I like to go with the flow’) and in what ways their VAC knowledge is influenced by native English usage and by transfer from their first language (L1), Turkish. An ICLE Turkish analysis gave us access to dominant verb-VAC associations in Turkish learners ́ English, and provided insights into the productivity and predictability of selected constructions. Comparisons with the BNC and other ICLE subsets (ICLE German and ICLE Spanish) allowed us to determine how strong the usage effect is on Turkish learners’ verb-VAC associations and whether Turkish learners differ in this respect from learners of other typologically different L1s. Potential effects of L1 transfer were explored with the help of a large reference corpus of Turkish, the Turkish National Corpus (TNC).

Use of Stance Lexical Bundles by Turkish and Japanese EFL Learners and Native English Speakers in Academic Writing

Linguists have been interested in the sequences of words that tend to occur for a long time. The present study examines a particular type of recurrent chunks called lexical bundles (LB). LBs are multi-word expressions and an important component of the fluent linguistic production depends on the control of them (Hyland, 2008a). The purpose of this study was to find out the most common stance LBs used in argumentative essays written by native English speakers and Turkish and Japanese EFL learners. It also aimed at finding the structural and functional characteristics of these bundles, and to what extent these structures used by the Turkish and Japanese EFL learners are similar to the ones used by the native speakers. To answer these questions, Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS), Japanese International Corpus of Learner English (JPICLE) and Turkish International Corpus of Learner English (TICLE) were used. The structures of the stance LBs were determined by following Biber’s (2006) classification and the functions were determined by adapting their classification. The concordancing program WordSmith was used to find and determine the 3-4 word stance LBs. In the statistical analysis, Type-token ratio and Log Likelihood were used. The results showed that native speakers use lexical bundles least; whereas, Japanese EFL learners use them most frequently. The functions and the structures of LBs vary in each group. Suggestions regarding how to teach these devices in foreign language education were also given.

Verb-argument constructions in advanced L2 English learner production: Insights from corpora and verbal fluency tasks

AbstractThis paper draws on data from learner and native-speaker corpora as well as psycholinguistic data to gain insights into second language speaker knowledge of English verb-argument constructions (VACs). For each of 34 VACs, L1 German and L1 Spanish advanced English learners’ and English native speakers’ dominant verb–VAC associations are examined based on data retrieved from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI), their respective Native Speaker (NS) reference corpora, and data collected in verbal fluency tasks in which participants complete VAC frames, such as, ‘she _______ with the…’ with verbs that come to mind. We compare findings from the different data sets and consider the strengths and limitations of each in relation to questions in usage-based second language acquisition and Construction Grammar.

Academic Phraseology: A Key Ingredient in Successful L2 Academic Literacy

One of the weaknesses of most current academic word lists is that they fail to do justice to the large stock of multiword units that are typical of academic language. The objective of this chapter is to raise awareness of the importance of phrasal academic vocabulary. After a brief critical survey of three recently compiled phrasal academic lists, the chapter highlights the potential contribution of learner corpus data to identifying the most useful units for teaching purposes. The approach is illustrated with a case study of phrasal metadiscourse based on corpora of novice and expert native writing, and subcorpora from the International Corpus of Learner English representing L2 writers from six different mother tongue backgrounds.

Plural nouns in Tswana English

ABSTRACTThis study analyzes non‐standard plurals, which have been reported for several Outer and Expanding Circle varieties, in Tswana English as exemplified in the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). The focus of the study is on substrate influence and transfer, which is often difficult to determine for African varieties of English given their extremely multilingual sociolinguistic setting. The results of the corpus analysis, compared to two typologically different Expanding Circle varieties, question the status of Tswana English as an Expanding Circle variety. In this context, this article discusses the Outer versus Expanding Circle distinction and the necessity to unequivocally assign a variety to either the Outer or Expanding Circle.

The distribution of reflexive intensifiers in learner English

AbstractThis study investigates the use of reflexive intensifiers by L1 German-speaking learners of L2 English against the background of previous research which has identified non-target-like distribution of such features which are sensitive to discourse constraints and/or register variation. Occurrences of intensified NPs are compared between theLouvain Corpus of Native English Essaysand the German component of theInternational Corpus of Learner English.In line with previous research, it is found that learners overuse this lexico-grammatical means of information highlighting. However, there is only significant overuse of a specific sub-type of intensifier, the inclusive adverbial intensifier. These results are discussed in terms of (i) general learnability considerations which may account for learners’ problems in mastering the use of register-sensitive information-structural patterns, and (ii) pedagogical issues which arise in connection with addressing residual non-target performance in written production beyond the stage at which target properties of lexico-grammar have generally been acquired.

Adversative Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language: A Cross-Sectional Perspective

The intention of this paper is to extend the empirical perspective on the functional acquisition of lexical pragmatic marking in learner English. While previous analyses have mostly focused on speech, and have considered a relatively homogeneous learner population in terms of proficiency, I shed some light on pragmatic marking in written discourse, and at different learner proficiency levels. To this end, I specifically contrast the usage of adversative pragmatic markers (e.g. actually, but, in fact, on the other hand) by beginning/intermediate learners (as represented in the International Corpus of Crosslinguistic Interlanguage) with the one of advanced learners (as represented by material form the International Corpus of Learner English). By way of a quantitative and qualitative analysis, I test when pragmatic markers first emerge in learner language. Factors considered are type of the first language of the learners as well as the patterns of emergence of individual pragmatic markers as well as variation between individual learner groups. In addition, I use data from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays as a further point of reference to determine whether and when native-like usage levels are approximated. The overall findings suggest (1) that different patterns of emergence can be observed for individual pragmatic markers (notably the core item but vs. others); (2) that the first-language background of the learners influences the time and rate of acquisition; and (3) that the development of a diversified system of adversative pragmatic marking represents a challenging feature, which is only mastered by advanced students.

Leksinių samplaikų sąrašo tikslinimas: bandymas taikyti Formulex metodą

A number of corpus studies focusing on the description of the use and functions of lexical bundles havebeen conducted recently in order to explore the phraseology of learner language. As with any studiesof lexical bundles, the problem of overlapping or structurally incomplete items poses a particularchallenge. In practice, it is often difficult to align such units with specific discourse functions. The factthat lexical bundles do not constitute neat form-and-meaning mappings results from, among otherreasons, their being grounded in language use rather than language system. In this pilot study weattempt to test a new method called Formulex (Forsyth, 2015a; 2015b) to verify whether an applicationof the criterion of coverage – in addition to the conventional criteria of orthographic length, minimumfrequency and distribution range (Biber et al., 1999) – may help obtain a more refined inventory of lexicalbundles and hence facilitate further qualitative analyses. To that end, we use Polish and Lithuaniancomponents of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE, Granger et al., 2009), as well as theLOCNESS corpus (CECL), representing academic essays written by British and American students. Theresults revealed that many lexical bundles of fixed length identified in a conventional way are fragmentsof longer chunks of text and hence they should not be treated as complete or standalone 4-word lexicalitems. It was also revealed that the application of the Formulex method, where the word sequences aremutually exclusive, helps a researcher filter out overlapping or non-perceptually salient lexical bundlesand, ultimately, specify more precise boundaries of lexical bundles of fixed length. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.29.15327

Detecting innovations in a parsed corpus of learner English

In research on L2 English, recent corpus-based studies indicate that some non-standard forms are shared by indigenized (ESL) and foreign (EFL) varieties of English, which challenges the idea of a clear dichotomy between innovation and error. We present a data-driven large-scale method to detect innovations, test it on verb + preposition structures (including phrasal verbs) and adjective + preposition structures, and describe similarities and differences between EFL and ESL. We use a dependency-parsed version of the International Corpus of Learner English to automatically extract potential innovations, defined as patterns of overuse compared to the British National Corpus as reference corpus. We measure overuse by means of collocation measures like O/E or T-score, and compare our results with similar results for ESL. In both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we detect similarities between the two varieties (e.g. discuss about) and dissimilarities (e.g. accuse for, only distinctive for EFL). We report more verb/adjective + preposition combinations than previous studies and discuss the roles of analogy and transfer.

Evaluative Language in Lithuanian Students’ English Writing. A Study of ‘Important’ and ‘Interesting’

Critical thinking, as one of the competences to be developed at universities, requires the ability to evaluate. Though different parts of speech can fall under the category of evaluative language, adjectives are among the most frequently used means to express evaluation. The present study is limited to the use of two positive evaluative adjectives in Lithuanian learner English. It aims to analyse whether the use of “interesting” and “important” in Lithuanian students’ writing depends on the text genre, language proficiency, educational institution variables and whether it differs in NNS and NS writing. The data were obtained from the Lithuanian parts of the Corpus of Academic Learner English and the International Corpus of Learner English, the corpus of the first year students’ examination essays written at Vilnius University and comparable native English corpora. The results of the study indicate overuse of “important” and “interesting” in Lithuanian students’ corpora and highlight the different roles that the variables under consideration play in the use of the studied adjectives.

A Serbian Translation of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”

This paper focuses on connectors though and however in Serbian EFL writing. The logical relationship established by the two connectors is con-cessive, the concept of concessiveness ranging from the very transparent cases, referred to as the strong ‘contrary-to-expectations’ implicature, to less transparent ones, referred to as the weak ‘contrary-to-expectations’ implicature. Besides, the two lexemes, though and however, can be used in other functional roles in the contemporary language; while though is more frequently used as a conjunction than as a connector, however is more frequently used as a connector than as an adverb.The research followed Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 2015). The data includes the three corpora of argumentative essays: a non-native one, ICLE-SE, belonging to the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium), and two native ones, British English and American English subsets of the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS-BE and LOCNESS-AE, respectively). The research is mainly qualitative.The results have shown that though is almost never used as a connector in the non-native corpus—only 1.7% of the total number of uses occupy this functional role. In the native corpora, conversely, every second or third use is as a connector. The case of however is different. Although it is almost exclusively used as a connector in all the three corpora, there are striking differences in its uses. The initial position is strongly favoured by non-native writers, unlike native writers, who use the medial and the final positions considerably more frequently. Apart from the striking differences, there is also a similarity in the three corpora: there are cases of however directly following the so-called ‘run-on’ comma, which is seen as non-grammatical in the referential descriptive grammars.Finally, we conclude that logical connectors though and however are chal-lenging for both descriptive linguistics and applied domains. It is quite expected, then, that they are a very demanding part of the language learning process, as the research has shown. It is suggested that the research results should be complemented by the classical contrastive analysis, focusing on the two connectors and their equivalents in Serbian.