Exploring Learner Language Through Corpora: Comparing and Interpreting Corpus Frequency Information

Learner Corpora and Natural Language Processing

Learner corpora collect the language produced by people learning their first or a second language. Natural Language Processing (NLP) deals with the representation and the automatic analysis and generation of human language. The two thus overlap in the representation and automatic analysis of learner language, which constitutes the topic of this chapter. As such, the chapter focuses on one of th...

Native Language Detection with ‘Cheap’ Learner Corpora

We begin by showing that the best publicly available, multiple-L1 learner corpus, the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger et al. 2009), has serious issues when used for the task of native language detection (NLD). The topic biases in the corpus are a confounding factor that result in crossvalidated performance that is misleading, for all the feature types which are traditionally us...

Comparing Corpora Using Frequency Profiling

This paper describes a method of comparing corpora which uses frequency profiling. The method can be used to discover key words in the corpora which differentiate one corpus from another. Using annotated corpora, it can be applied to discover key grammatical or word-sense categories. This can be used as a quick way in to find the differences between the corpora and is shown to have applications...

On the Annotation and Use of Learner Language Corpora

Second language Writing Through Blogs: An Investigation of Learner Autonomy

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups.  Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n = 21) were taught ba...