Learner corpora and Second Language Acquisition research

245 Pages·2016·7.81 MB·English

by  Anke Lüdeling

Learner corpora and Second Language Acquisition research
AnkeLüdeling
CLiF,Bloomington,June2016
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Table of Contents
1 Corpusdesignandcollection
Corpusdesign: samples,learner-specificissues
Hands-onsession1
2 ErrorAnnotation
3 Otherannotationlayers
4 Quantitativeanalysis
5 Summary
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Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research
“Thetwomain,welldocumentedfindingsofSLAresearchofthepastfewdecadesareas
follows:
secondlanguageacquisitionishighlysystematic
secondlanguageacquisitionishighlyvariable
Althoughthesetwostatementsmightappearcontradictoryatfirstsight,theyarenot.
Thefirstoneprimarilyreferstowhathasbeencalledtherouteofdevelopment(the
natureofthestagesalllearnersgothroughwhenacquiringthesecondlanguage-L2).
Thisrouteremainslargelyindependentofboththelearner’smothertongue(L1)andthe
contextoflearning(e.g. whetherinstructedinaclassroomoracquirednaturallyby
exposure). Thesecondstatementusuallyreferstoeithertherateofthelearningprocess
(thespeedatwhichlearnersarelearningtheL2),ortheoutcomeofthelearningprocess
(howproficientlearnersbecome),orboth. Weallknowthatbothspeedoflearningand
rangeofoutcomesarehighlyvariablefromlearnertolearner: somedomuchbetter
muchmorequicklythanothers.” (Myles2000)
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SLA and learner corpora
Corpusevidenceshouldbeusedtoinformacquisitionframeworksandmodels.
Learnercorpusdata(ifcollectedandpreparedaccordingtotherelevant
principles)canbeusefulforthestudyof
systematicity
variation.
cf.,amongmany,manyothers,Bygate2009;Granger2002;Granger2009;Johansson2009;
LüdelingandWalter2010;Vyatkinaetal.2015;WulffandGries2010;Römeretal.2014,and
manyarticlesinGrangeretal.2015
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Learner corpora
Learnercorporacontaintextsfromlearnersofasecond/foreignlanguage(L2).
Thesetextscanbe
spoken(signaland/ortranscription),written,multimodal
producedbylearnersofanyproficiencylevelandanyL1
producedfreelyortask-based
longitudinalorcross-sectional
“raw”orannotated
Note: Althoughitishighlyrelevantforacquisitiontheory,inthissummerschoolwewillnot
makeadifferencebetweenSecondLanguageAcquisition(untutored)andForeignLanguage
Acquisition(tutored). ThereisalargebodyofresearchonL3etc. –hereIwilluseL2foranyLn.
(Andwearenotinterestedinfirstlanguageacquisitioncorpora.)
Foracomprehensivelistoflearnercorporaseethe“Corporaaroundtheworld”pagemaintainedby
theCentreforEnglishCorpusLinguisticsatLouvainlaNeuve,
https://www.uclouvain.be/en-cecl-lcworld.html.
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Learner data
Learnercorporaprovideone typeofevidenceinthestudyofacquisition. Itcan
(andshould)becomplementedbyothertypesofevidence(experimental,
behavioral,…).
Corpusdatacanbeusedto
exploreavarietyorphenomenon
findhypothesesthatcanthenbetestedinothercorporaorwithother
methods
as“experimental”datathatisusedinhypothesistesting
(careful! moreonthislater)
informmodels
Oncombiningdifferentmethodsinacquisitionstudies,cf. EllisandSimpson-Vlach(2009),Wulff
etal.(2009),andLittré(2015).
Statisticalmodellingisactuallyoneofthemostinterestingmethodsinstudyinglearnerdata. We
donothavetimetogointothisherebutseeGries(2015b)andGriesandDeshors(2015).
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Mantra
<mantra>
Corpusdesignandcorpusannotationdependprimarilyontheresearchquestion.
Corpusarchitectureandformatsdependongeneralconsiderations(availability,
transparency,re-usability,reproducability).
</mantra>
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Table of Contents
1 Corpusdesignandcollection
Corpusdesign: samples,learner-specificissues
Hands-onsession1
2 ErrorAnnotation
3 Otherannotationlayers
4 Quantitativeanalysis
5 Summary
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Sampling | Corpus design
statisticalaspects Typically,onewantstoanalyzeapopulationthatistoobigfor
exhaustiveanalysisandtherefore,onehastodrawasample.
Samplescanbeopportunistic,stratified,orrepresentative. The
samplingstrategydeterminesthepossibilitiestoextrapolate.
content Whichtextsshouldthelearnercorpuscontain? Whichsampling
parametersarerelevant?
Thediscussionhereisbriefandsuperficial. FormoreonthestatisticalissuesofsamplingseeBiber
(1993)andOakes(1998). SeeKilgarriff(2005),Evert(2006),andGries(2010)onnon-randomness
withincorpora(dispersion,burstiness). SeeGilquin(2015)onlearnercorpusdesign.
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firstwehavetooperationalizewhat
wemeanby“coveredbyforest”
wecannottraveleverywhere–how
shouldweproceed?
!
extrapolationfromthese
opportunisticsampleswouldlead
toinvalidresults
Corpus design | Sampling strategies
Researchquestion: Howmuchof
Germanyiscoveredbyforest?
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