The relationships between the average semester growth rates of lexical sophistication in L2 English writing at secondary school: A learner corpus analysis

In line with Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), the aim of the paper is to examine dynamics and causality among the growth rates of lexical sophistication in L2 writing development. The study was based on The Written English Developmental Corpus of Polish Learners (WEDCPL) which consists of over 1,900 essays composed during 21 repeated measurements by 100 learners over three years (2014–2017) at secondary school. Lexical sophistication, operationalised as different frequency levels, was analysed with the Lextutor software (Cobb 2014). The results indicated that the learners relied on the first frequency level. The monthly growth rates (MGRs) of the frequency levels were variable but no significant peaks were registered. The relationships between the average semester growth rates (ASGRs) revealed competition between the first and higher frequency levels, and some support between the higher levels. Thus, developing learners’ lexis beyond the first level counteracts the production of lexically unsophisticated texts and supports the use of more advanced words.

INTEGRATING LEARNER CORPUS ANALYSIS INTO THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH ACADEMIC WRITING

Practical implementation of learner corpus research to inform language pedagogy has been common, given the availability of resources, such as a large amount of data about the products of language learning and factual language uses, and the necessary technology, such as concordance programs. This article lays out the typical analyses of learner corpora and the implications of and issues surrounding such studies on second/foreign language teaching based on the existing literature. More specifically, the article captures the need for a more extensive corpus of Indonesian learners’ English other than what is already available to represent more insights about English language teaching in Indonesia. Furthermore, it proposes the development of an in-house learner corpus for direct and indirect uses at Universitas Indonesia. An actual trial on building a sample learner corpus and running a lexical analysis demonstrates the plausibility of integrating learner corpus into the teaching of academic writing on higher-education levels.

L2 Proficiency and L2 Developmental Stages: A Learner Corpus Analysis

This paper presents part of the results of a learner corpus study of English oral and written production by a large number of Japanese native speakers. Each participant was asked to perform two tasks, namely spoken and written narratives, using a picture book titled “Frog, where are you?” (Mayer, 1969) containing 24 wordless pictures. For the analyses in the current study, the data from 80 learners, focusing on audio-recorded and transcribed spoken narratives, was used. The Japanese learners’ speech production was examined based on Processability Theory (PT; Pienemann, 1998, 2005; Bettoni & Di Biase, 2015) as well as on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001). Results show that there is a correlation between second language (L2) proficiency levels and L2 developmental stages in a learner corpus of L2 spoken English. On the other hand, the dispersion is found to increase at higher stages as shown in previous studies (e.g., Granfeldt & Ågren, 2013; Hagenfeld, 2017).

Building a local learner corpus

This paper describes the construction process involved in creating a robust local learner corpus of texts produced by international students in a first-year writing course at a large public, mid-western university in the U.S. We show how involving faculty members and graduate students of our local writing program in the process of learner corpus analysis provides them with opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge as writing instructors, course designers, and, ultimately, knowledge producers. An additional benefit of such an undertaking is that the corpus can become part of the infrastructure of a research community that allows continued contributions by others individually and collaboratively. We also illustrate the usefulness of our local learner corpus for research, teaching, mentoring, and collaboration within our writing program with examples of the research projects and teaching interventions we have developed.