Learner corpora in language testing and assessment

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...

Teacher and Learner in Humanistic Language Teaching

Since ‘the development of whole person’ was brought to the focus of attention by humanist psychologists as a central concern in educational theory, affective variables have been assumed to have a significant share in the learning process that goes on in a pedagogical setting. Meanwhile, the process of second language development, because of the very nature of language as a vehicle for communica...

On the Annotation and Use of Learner Language Corpora

Dynamic Assessment of a Schizophrenic Foreign Language Learner

Objectives: This case study highlights the applicability of Dynamic Assessment (DA) in exploring the cognitive development and intellectual functioning of a schizophrenic foreign language learner. Methods: The general analytical framework of study to unmask the changes in the learner’s competence is Microgenesis. Results: Analysis of the findings not only supports the Vygotskian view re...