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Article published In:
International Journal of Learner Corpus Research
Vol. 9:2 (2023) ► pp.180–214
Research article

L1 novice writing as a missing piece in the Learner Corpus Research puzzle

The case of hedging

| Université catholique de Louvain

This paper investigates the possible benefits of integrating an L1 novice corpus into the study of learner writing, through a study on hedging adverbials and complement clauses. A more traditional tripartite comparison is first drawn between French EFL learner writing, L1 English novice writing, and English expert writing. Then, a comparison is made between L1 French novice writing and French EFL learner writing. The study uses data from the following corpora: the Varieties of English for Specific Purposes dAtabase (VESPA; Paquot et al., 2022) (French EFL learner writing), the British Academic Written English (BAWE; Heuboeck et al., 2008) corpus and the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP; Ädel & Römer, 2012) (both L1 English novice writing), the Kulturell Identitet i Akademisk Prosa: nasjonal versus disiplinavhengig (KIAP‑EN; Fløttum et al., 2006) corpus (English expert writing), and the The French Academic wRiting (FAR) corpus (L1 French novice writing). The results speak to the importance of including a L1 novice component to the current methodologies employed in Learner Corpus Research (LCR), since such inclusion helps to provide a better and more nuanced interpretation of the findings obtained by means of a more traditional tripartite approach.

Keywords: L1 novice writing, learner writing, learner corpus research, hedging
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Corpus data
      • 2.1.1French EFL learner writing
      • 2.1.2L1 English novice writing
      • 2.1.3English expert writing
      • 2.1.4L1 French novice writing
      • 2.1.5Comparability of the corpora
    • 2.2Operationalization of hedging
    • 2.3Hedge identification
      • 2.3.1Adverbials
      • 2.3.2Complement clauses
    • 2.4Data disambiguation
    • 2.5Statistical methods
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Frequencies
    • 3.2Lexical preferences
    • 3.3Diversity of hedge use
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.00033.jad
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