'Learner language, learner corpora', Oulu, Finland

Event date:
2012-10-05 An event entitled 'Learner language, learner corpora' will take place from 5 to 6 October 2012 in Oulu, Finland.

People learning a new language often make mistakes when speaking in the target language. 'Interlanguage' is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language: preserving some features of their first language (or L1), or overgeneralising target language rules in speaking or writing the target language and creating innovations.

Learner corpora are electronic collections of authentic foreign or second language data. They differ from the data types commonly used by second language acquisition and foreign language teaching (FLT) researchers in two major respects:
- They are computerised and can be analysed using a wide range of linguistic software tools which provide for quick and efficient manipulation of the data and can enrich the data with linguistic information (e.g., grammatical category and syntactic structure) ;
- They are large and constitute a reliable basis to describe and model learner language.

The conference is aimed at those who use electronic data in learner language analyses, as well as those who study Finno-Ugric learner languages, their acquisition and teaching. Discussion will focus on identifying general tendencies or universals that are present in learner language regardless of the learner's mother tongue.

Quality validation date:
2011-12-30