Error-tagged Learner Corpora and CALL

A Promising Synergy

Authors

  • Sylviane Granger University of Louvain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v20i3.465-480

Keywords:

Learner Corpus, Corpus Annotation, Error Tagging, Concordance, CALL

Abstract

Learner corpora--electronic collections of foreign or second language learner data--constitute a new resource for second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language teaching (FLT) specialists. They are especially useful when they are error-tagged, that is, when all errors in the corpus have been annotated with the help of a standardized system of error tags. This article describes the three-tiered error annotation system designed to annotate the French Interlanguage Database (FRIDA) corpus. The research took place within the framework of the FreeText project which aims to produce a learner corpus-informed CALL program for French as a Foreign Language. Once annotated, the FRIDA corpus was put through standard text retrieval software to extract detailed error statistics and to carry out concordance-based analyses of specific error types. The results were used to focus the CALL exercises on learners' attested difficulties and to improve the error diagnosis system integrated in the CALL program.

Author Biography

  • Sylviane Granger, University of Louvain

    Sylviane Granger is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Louvain (Belgium). She is the director of the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics where research activity is focused on the compilation and exploitation of learner and bilingual corpora. Her publications include Learner English on computer (Ed.) (Longman, 1998) and Computer learner corpora, second language acquisition and foreign language teaching (Granger, Hung, & Petch-Tyson (Eds.). Benjamins, 2002).

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Published

2013-01-14

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Granger, S. (2013). Error-tagged Learner Corpora and CALL: A Promising Synergy. CALICO Journal, 20(3), 465-480. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v20i3.465-480

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