Learner Corpus Research Articles

Exploring part of speech (pos) tag sequences in a large-scale learner corpus of L2 English: a developmental perspective

This research explores the pos tag sequences that shape the transition from upper intermediate (B2 cefr) to near-native proficiency (C2 cefr) in a corpus of essays ( n=32,410) from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. Gilquin (2018) and others have shown that pos tag sequences offer a holistic approach to extracting the most commonly used patterns without a starting point of an a priori set of words and word sequences. Using corpus linguistics informed by usage-based theories of language learning, this paper examines the frequency and distribution of 4-slot pos-tag sequences in L2 English writing, drawing on the taxonomy of pattern grammar ( Francis et al., 1996 , 1998 ; and Hunston and Francis, 2000 ). Findings point to the presence of both core and emergent pos-tag sequences in learner language in the two proficiency levels analysed. These sequences point to the presence of dynamic language restructuring processes as learners become more proficient and re-evaluate their understanding of frequency and distribution in English. This paper shows evidence of how language competence increases with proficiency. The research offers new evidence in our understanding of the development of L2 writing in efl contexts.

Variation in the Grammatical Feature of 'Voice' across the Spoken and Written Academic Registers of BS English Students of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan

The research paper investigates variation in the prevalence and distribution of ‘voice’ in the spoken (presentations/interviews) and written (essays/midterm exam scripts) academic registers of BS English students of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the relation of this variation to the situational circumstances of the concerned registers. The learner corpus was constructed. The data was collected from BS English students of the twelve public sector universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. All the texts were transcribed, coded, and then analysed through the computer software AntConc (3.5.8). The present study is unique in the sense that it has conducted a comparative analysis of the various spoken and written sub-registers of English in the academic non-native environment. This study has great implications for researchers in the field of register analysis, material design, and language teaching.

The Impact of Private Television Crime Shows on Youth: Examining the Link Between Media Consumption and Aggressive Behaviour

The research paper investigates variation in the prevalence and distribution of ‘voice’ in the spoken (presentations/interviews) and written (essays/midterm exam scripts) academic registers of BS English students of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the relation of this variation to the situational circumstances of the concerned registers. The learner corpus was constructed. The data was collected from BS English students of the twelve public sector universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. All the texts were transcribed, coded, and then analysed through the computer software AntConc (3.5.8). The present study is unique in the sense that it has conducted a comparative analysis of the various spoken and written sub-registers of English in the academic non-native environment. This study has great implications for researchers in the field of register analysis, material design, and language teaching.

L1 Influence on the Use of the English Present Perfect: A Corpus Analysis of Russian and Spanish Learners’ Essays

Background: Mastering verbal tenses, especially those expressing aspect, in a second language presents a challenge as learners frequently link the semantic nuances of verbal forms in their second language (L2) to the characteristics of the verbal systems in their native languages (L1). This study explores the impact of L1 on the usage of the English Present Perfect (PP) among non-native speakers. Purpose: In an effort to contribute to the ongoing research on the mechanisms governing the acquisition of English tenses, this study focuses on the variations that affect the usage of the PP in the writing of English learners. The investigation is particularly centered on university students whose L1 is Russian and Spanish, seeking to delve into the ways in which their first language influences the utilisation of the PP in their English writing. Method: Analysis of L2 English by Russian and Spanish learners, based on corpora of argumentative essays written by undergraduate Russian and Spanish learners of English, controlled by a corpus of essays produced by native speakers of English; frequency and distribution of the PP in learner writings; examination of semantic contexts; identification of error types. Results: The findings indicate that, despite a higher occurrence of the PP in texts produced by Spanish learners compared to Russian learners, the rate of errors in its application is nearly identical in both learner corpora. These errors are likely attributable to challenges in comprehending the functions of the PP and in distinguishing its semantics from those of other English tenses, particularly the Past Simple. Conclusion: The study suggests that the increased prevalence of PP usage by L2 learners may be attributed to positive transfer from their L1 when it exhibits structures analogous to the English PP. Conversely, patterns indicative of, for example, undergeneralisation of semantic contexts suggesting the relevance of an action, or of overgeneralisation of adverbs compatible with the PP can be interpreted as evidence of negative transfer. The results of this study hold significance for language pedagogy, as they highlight potential challenges in acquiring the PP that learners from diverse L1 backgrounds may encounter.

A Corpus-based Analysis of Rhetorical Moves and P-frames in an Omani Learner Corpus of Research Project Abstracts

Background: Rhetorical moves have long been studied in several disciplinary texts, including research articles and their part-genres. A solid base of literature has emerged in this respect, informing current writing pedagogy for novice writers. However, one part-genre which has been rarely studied is student project abstracts. This paper represents one of the first studies to explore the extent rhetorical moves are realised through the linguistic unit of phrase frames (p-frames) in final year Capstone project abstracts. Methods: Using two faculty-informed analytical frameworks, the paper explores the use of rhetorical moves and p-frames in corpora of Social and Physical Science student abstracts. The moves and the p-frames (if any) used to realise them were identified in order to understand how students organised this part-genre and to gauge their formulaicity. Results: Amongst the key findings was that Omani students did not perform all the rhetorical moves recommended by the faculty. Moreover, they added spontaneous moves of their own to the abstracts. When performing rhetorical moves, they used very few p-frames, indicating that their approach did not rely on formulaic language of this nature. Conclusions: Pedagogical implications for the Omani context and for broader EAP contexts are discussed.

A collostructional approach to Japanese noun-modifying clause construction use and acquisition: a learner corpus study

Abstract Japanese features a general noun-modifying clause construction (NMCC) with a more versatile range of semantic and pragmatic interpretations than equivalent constructions in other languages. Motivated by the learning challenge NMCCs pose to Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) learners, this article examines speech data from the International Corpus of Japanese as a Second Language (I-JAS) to compare learner use of NMCCs against a large L1 Japanese corpus. Instances of the construction from both corpora were analyzed to identify high-frequency part-of-speech categories and subcategories in the modifying clause predicate and head noun slots. A simple collexeme analysis was then employed to identify strongly attracted and repelled lexical items among those identified in realizations of the construction. Taken together, findings from these analyses revealed an important connection between the semantic weight of head nouns in NMCCs and the idiomaticity of the construction, with learner productions demonstrating a tendency toward heavy head nouns. This study lays the groundwork for future research seeking to explore the NMCC at different levels of granularity and to improve its treatment in JFL pedagogical materials.

Hedges and Boosters in Academic Writing of ASEAN EFL Learners

Hedges and boosters in general, and academic writing in particular, assume significant role in allowing writers to mitigate opposing claims while strengthening their arguments supported by reliable data. This study aimed to quantify the frequencies of hedges and boosters used by second language (L2) learners of English in ten ASEAN countries, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan. Research samples were collected from the ICNALE learner corpus comprising 5,400 two different, determined topics of academic writings. Lancsbox 6.0 was utilized to analyse the sample texts. The results elucidate a notable trend wherein ASEAN English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners exhibit a preference for boosters over hedges Among the identified overused boosters are completely, really, and always, while overused hedges include usually, often, and maybe. This inclination suggests that EFL learners express confidence in articulating their perspectives. Boosters serve as instrumental tools to reinforce confidence and certainty, emphasize significance and relevance, strengthen persuasiveness, enhance coherence and flow, and establish authority and academic voice. Nevertheless, it is imperative for L2 learners to recognize the importance of hedges in denoting tentativeness, softening criticism, acknowledging limitations, and establishing expertise.

“Let’s Move on to the Recommendations.” The Use of Phrasal Verbs in Business Presentations of University Students in Hong Kong

Phrasal verbs (PVs), as a notoriously difficult L2 feature, have attracted the attention of applied linguists for a few decades. Empowered by corpus linguistics, the current study explored the quantity and quality of PVs in business presentations of university students in Hong Kong, to investigate nuances of the PV production of students in contexts. The learner corpus consists of twenty business case study presentations by 36 mixed-L1 students. Quantitative results showed that students used a sizeable number of PVs accurately. The most common lexical verbs showed a different pattern compared with native speakers of English, while the most common adverbial particles were mostly identical to those used by native speakers. International students seemed to use more PVs than Chinese L1 students and the avoidance phenomenon was observed on a few PVs. The unnatural PV use mostly stemmed from misuse of the adverbial particles due to negative L1 transfer and two instances of creative PV use were observed on English L1 speakers. We advise language teachers to incorporate more comprehensive instruction of PVs in business English courses (including common collocations, syntactic particularities, and polysemy) as well as more authentic L2 exposure.

Metadata design for the first electronic learner corpus of Romanian

This paper introduces an ongoing work of collecting, annotating and documenting the first digital Romanian Learner Corpus (LECOR), focusing on its metadata. We shortly describe the institutional context of the project, the current state of the art in the field, the objectives in terms of structure, dimensions and annotations and what work has already been done at this stage of the project. Then we present the modular structure of the metadata scheme and a detailed account of all the metadata fields and their possible values, from general metadata concerning the whole corpus (Section 3.1), to metadata organised around the student/learner (Section 3.2) and text/composition (Section 3.3). We will also give some examples of how metadata has been dealt with in various researches (including based on LECOR corpus).

Using lexical bundles to teach prepositions to Korean EFL students

Abstract Integrating corpus-based analyses with instructed SLA, this study explores how lexical bundles can be used to teach prepositions to EFL learners. It first identifies lexical bundles occurring most frequently with preposition errors in a learner corpus of L1-Korean high school student writing. It then uses the 10 identified bundles to compare three different types of instructional treatment: one hundred L1-Korean high school EFL students received either implicit instruction (teaching each bundle as a unit with no emphasis on embedded prepositions) or one of two types of explicit instruction (focusing on embedded prepositions with or without input enhancement). The explicit-instruction-with-input-enhancement group showed the greatest improvement, followed closely by the implicit-instruction group; the other explicit group showed the least improvement. These results suggest that textual enhancement can facilitate L2 preposition acquisition and that recurrent sequences such as lexical bundles can serve as a useful pedagogical means to teach linguistic forms.

Structural analysis of lexical bundles in graduate students' research paper abstracts

Lexical bundles, as a recurrent sequence of words, are an important component of both spoken and written academic corpora, used both by professional academics and student writers in order to contribute to better structural organization, efficient communication, and well-established credibility. These expressions are formulaic and highly frequent, with rather clear discourse function and communicative purpose. The most frequently used structures of lexical bundles include NP-based, VP-based, and clause-based bundles. The aim of the paper is to explore the lexical bundles on a learner corpus of 448 abstracts written by non-native English speakers in English during their Masters studies. Structural analysis is performed in order to observe which structures students prefer and utilize while writing abstracts. The corpus was subdivided into two sub-corpora, depending on whether graduate students received any formal instruction on academic writing before publishing their abstracts, to explore whether instructions influence the use of lexical bundles with novice writers. The results offer the most common structures of lexical bundles that graduate students use, as well as the analysis of the types and diversity of lexical bundles used based on whether or not students had academic writing instructions.

An Analysis of Errors in English Style of Chinese College English Learners —Based on a Study from the Corpus of Chinese English Learners

An Analysis of Errors in English Style of Chinese College English Learners —Based on a Study from the Corpus of Chinese English Learners

University of Macau Portuguese learner corpus and teaching of Portuguese L2

Resumo O presente artigo apresenta um corpus de aprendizes chineses de português L2 com a anotação de PoS e lema, destacando-se sua potencialidade de análise quantitativa e qualitativa na identificação de padrões linguísticos dos aprendizes, contribuindo, dessa forma, para o ensino de português L2. Este corpus (Corpus de Aprendizes de Português da Universidade de Macau), denominado UMPLC, contém, no total, 933 composições produzidas por 122 estudantes de português da Universidade de Macau durante três anos de estudo consecutivos. A anotação de PoS e lema realizou-se através do Stanza, anotador automático desenvolvido por Qi et al. ( 2020 ). A fim de garantir a consistência de anotação, o resultado foi revisado manualmente. Nesta pesquisa, as informações de PoS e lema permitem-nos investigar quantitativa e qualitativamente diversos fenômenos existentes no corpus relativos ao aspeto lexical e à mudança diacrônica desse aspeto. Dois estudos foram realizados com base em uma abordagem contrastiva, comparando-se o português dos aprendizes do corpus com o português nativo. Foram descobertas características de não-natividade linguística desses aprendizes, o que permitirá que os professores de português L2 se concentrem nas áreas em que é necessário um trabalho corretivo.

A Corpus Study of Dyslexic University Students’ L2 Writing Processes

Second/foreign language (L2) writing is a critical skill for university students, and one that has attracted a great deal of attention in the literature on academic writing. Yet, one aspect that has received relatively less attention so far is the writing processes of language learners with dyslexia in this context. This study investigates the L2 writing processes of high-functioning dyslexic university students compared to their non-dyslexic counterparts, focusing on pausing and revision behaviours. The data come from a learner corpus representing the writing processes in addition to the written products. The participants are French-speaking learners of English who wrote two texts in English while keystroke logging technology captured their writing processes in real time. The analysis of the data reveals that dyslexic learners exhibit longer overall pausing time and more frequent pauses within words than the control group, indicating potential challenges with word-level processing in L2. They also exhibit longer overall revision time as well as longer mean revision duration than non‑dyslexic learners. Qualitative analysis reveals differences in editing approaches. While dyslexic learners engage in a non-linear editing process, non‑dyslexic learners follow a more linear process. These findings may be indicative of the heavy cognitive load that dyslexic students arguably experience when managing writing processes in L2 contexts.

Underpassivization Errors by Japanese EFL Learners: A Theoretical Analysis

It is widely known that English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners wrongly produce passives with intransitive verbs such as happen and appear, which is called overpassivization. This study aims to explore constructions with the prototypical dative verb give and provide a theoretical account of errors that Japanese EFL learners frequently make based on data collected from the Japanese EFL Learner Corpus. The results reveal cases in which the sentence looks active, but its interpretation is passive, called underpassivization. For example, I gave this book, we infer that “I” is the person who offered this toy to someone. However, a detailed analysis reveals cases in which “I” refers to the recipient of the toy; that is, the speaker intended to say “I was given this toy.” This corpus-based study assumes that underpassivization errors are created by moving the recipient originating in VP to the specifier position of IP, the subject position.

Lexical Level in English Major EFL Students’ Writing: A Learner Corpus Study

Lexical Level in English Major EFL Students’ Writing: A Learner Corpus Study

A Corpus-Based Study on Korean High School Students’ Common Errors in English Writing

The purpose of this study is to investigate the common errors in writing production made by Korean high school students. It aims to provide information on the areas that Korean high school students need to develop and to inform their educational needs. For this, high school students’ writing samples were collected and built into a learner corpus named Shinhyeon Corpus of High school Learners’ English Essays (SCOHLEE). The study identified frequent errors produced by the high school students adopting a computer-aided error analysis (CEA) technique using the Louvain Error Tagging Manual, and quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted by using corpus tools (AntConc 4.0). The results revealed that a total of 3,368 errors were categorized into 7 major categories and 47 sub-categories, with article errors (GA) produced the most. Regarding English proficiency, mid-level learners produced a higher rate of errors and a wider range of error types. Additionally, the study showed a significant increase in the frequency of punctuation errors in the second semester. Overall, this study has pedagogical implications for lexis, grammar and writing instruction and the provision of error correction.

L1 novice writing as a missing piece in the Learner Corpus Research puzzle

Abstract This paper investigates the possible benefits of integrating an L1 novice corpus into the study of learner writing, through a study on hedging adverbials and complement clauses. A more traditional tripartite comparison is first drawn between French EFL learner writing, L1 English novice writing, and English expert writing. Then, a comparison is made between L1 French novice writing and French EFL learner writing. The study uses data from the following corpora: the Varieties of English for Specific Purposes dAtabase (VESPA; Paquot et al., 2022) (French EFL learner writing), the British Academic Written English (BAWE; Heuboeck et al., 2008) corpus and the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP; Ädel & Römer, 2012) (both L1 English novice writing), the Kulturell Identitet i Akademisk Prosa: nasjonal versus disiplinavhengig (KIAP‑EN; Fløttum et al., 2006) corpus (English expert writing), and the The French Academic wRiting (FAR) corpus (L1 French novice writing). The results speak to the importance of including a L1 novice component to the current methodologies employed in Learner Corpus Research (LCR), since such inclusion helps to provide a better and more nuanced interpretation of the findings obtained by means of a more traditional tripartite approach.

Creation of an electronic learner corpus of French as a foreign language

According to research findings, learner corpora can have many functions in the field of Applied Linguistics. This was the thinking behind the creation of the KPG Learner Corpus of French1. This interlanguage corpus is comprised of written productions in French obtained from Greek-speaking learners/users of French who participated in the differentiated and graded certification examinations for the National Foreign Language Exam System (Κρατικό Πιστοποιητικό Γλωσσομάθειας, ΚΠΓ) in Greece. It is an ongoing project, which, in its present form, is comprised of 630 written productions of Levels A, B and C (165 000 words) covering a period of two years (2018-2019). As regards its potential applicability and value, useful observations could bring to the fore choices, problems and errors relating to the learners’ interlanguage.

University of Lille and CNRS Research unit ‘Savoirs, Textes, Langage’

In this article, we analyze a learner corpus of English-to-French translation tasks produced by advanced students enrolled in their final year of a professional translation master’s program. Specifically, we investigate their use of so-called non-standard, non-SVO word order structures: clefting, pseudo-clefting, dislocation, extraposition, and inversion. We aim to confirm students’ tendency to overuse SVO word order in their translations in comparison with original French and to provide a finer-grained analysis of their (non-)use of non-standard structures. Complementary analyses on a corpus of machine-translated texts and a corpus of professional translations provide further comparisons. Thanks to an approach where corpus material is used to assist students in the development of their translation skills, all these results are meant to have pedagogical value, by highlighting the specificities of student translations to help them write more authentic texts that take into account language use related to word order. The comparison with machine-translated texts is intended to help students develop post-editing skills. Keywords: translation training, translation quality, word order variation, specialized translation, post-editing