Computer Learner Corpus Research: Current Status and Future Prospects

Despite a mere decade of existence, the field of computer learner corpus (CLC) research has been the focus of so much active international work that it seems worth taking a retrospective look at the research accomplished to date and considering the prospects for future research in both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) that emerge. One of the main distinguishing features of computer learner corpora – and indeed one of their main strengths – is that they can be used by specialists from both these fields and thus constitute a possible point of contact between them. The first three sections of this chapter are devoted to a brief overview of the main aspects of CLC research: data collection, methodological approaches, learner corpus typology, and size and representativeness. Sections 4 and 5 review the tangible results of CLC research in the fields of SLA and FLT.