Building an Oral and Written Learner Corpus of a School Programme: Methodological Issues
Philippa Bell, Laura Collins, Emma J. Marsden · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020
The importance of methodological transparency in Learner Corpus Research is paramount for correct understanding and interpretation of knowledge created using corpora. Increasing calls for open-access corpora amplify the need for transparency. This paper details a pilot study conducted to understand the importance of methodological decisions on the subsequent corpus by examining (a) the effects of language used to provide instructions on text length and L1 use and (b) the chosen elicitation tasks in terms of student interest and ability to differentiate proficiency across school grade levels. Furthermore, it details transcription and annotation challenges that had to be addressed. The aim of the chapter is to demonstrate the numerous decisions and their effects at all stages of corpus building, and the importance of working towards transparent reporting of methodologies and standardisation of transcription and annotation where possible.