Parsing Learner Text: to Shoehorn or not to Shoehorn

The texts written by language learners can be considered a type of non-canonical text. Language learners tend to make errors when writing in a second language and in this regard, can be seen to violate the canonical rules of a language. The kinds of errors that learners may make include: spelling, grammatical, vocabulary, collocation. The extent and degree to which learners make errors will depend on their proficiency level and this is a factor that should be taken into account when thinking about non-native writing. Highly proficient speakers will make very few errors, and given just a small sample of text it may not even be possible to identify that they are language learners. However, at the same time, the kinds of errors that even highlyproficient language learners make are often very different from the kinds of errors that a native speaker will make. A non-native speaker is likely to have the most trouble with collocations and lexical choice, whereas a native speaker will be less likely to have difficulty here (Leacock et al., 2014).