Chapter published in:
Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes
Edited by Alexandra U. Esimaje, Ulrike Gut and Bassey E. Antia
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 88] 2019
► pp. 72–96

The purpose, design and use of the Corpus of Nigerian and Cameroonian English Learner Language (Conacell)

| Benson Idahosa University
This chapter reports on a new learner corpus project, describes its purpose and design, and demonstrates its use: the error-annotated corpus of 442,939 words of Nigerian and Cameroonian English Learner Language (Conacell) (Esimaje 2016). The aim of the project is to produce a resource for measuring learners’ language development and to enhance the teaching-learning process. The corpus data comprises the language output of 998 students; 383 university and 615 secondary students. The specific uses of the corpus to explore lexical form and tense usages by learners in Nigeria and Cameroon are shown. Corpus analysis reveals, for instance, that the lexical form of capitalisation and tense are hard to learn, and therefore remain learning needs in the contexts.
Published online: 13 February 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.04esi
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