Using a Learner Corpus to Develop Learner Language Profiles

This paper describes the development and subsequent analysis of across-sectional learner corpus comprising written samples from students in the first, second and third years of the English language writing program at Reitaku University, Japan. Students completed two writing tasks, a narrative and an argumentative essay, which were then analyzed to determine whether gains were made in the areas of fluency, lexical richness, grammatical accuracy and use of rhetorical/cohesive devices.Gains were observed in all of these four areas, the process of annotating the raw data revealed areas which were problematic for student writers but were unelaborated by the analysis employed in this research. These observations illuminate the limitations of this study and highlight directions for further analysis