Detmar Meurers and Markus Dickinson
Language Learning, Special Issue on Language learning research at the intersection of experimental, corpus-based and computational methods: Evidence and Interpretation, to appear 2017.
The paper discusses two types of opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration between computational linguistics and language learning research. We target the connection between data and theory in second language research and highlight opportunities to i) enrich the options for obtaining data, and ii) support the identification and valid interpretation of relevant learner data.
We first characterize options, limitations, and potential for obtaining rich data on learning: from web-based intervention studies supporting the collection of experimentally controlled data to online workbooks facilitating large-scale, longitudinal corpus collection for a range of learning tasks and proficiency levels. We then turn to the question of how corpus data can systematically be used for second language research, focusing on the central role that linguistic corpus annotation plays in that regard. We show that learner language poses particular challenges to human and computational linguistic analysis and requires more interdisciplinary discussion of analysis frameworks and advances in annotation schemes.
Electronically available file formats:
- pdf (Draft of October 3, 2016, rev. 14482)
Note: The electronic versions of the publications linked on this page are the last versions I had the copyright for. Where a publisher copyedited and/or typeset the papers, the electronic copies linked here are NOT identical to the officially published version, which should be used for any quotes, references to page numbers, etc.
Bibtex entry:
@Article{Meurers.Dickinson-17,
author = {Detmar Meurers and Markus Dickinson},
title = {Evidence and Interpretation in Language Learning Research:
Opportunities for Collaboration with Computational Linguistics},
journal = {Language Learning, Special Issue on Language learning
research at the intersection of experimental,
corpus-based and computational methods: Evidence and Interpretation},
year = 2017,
note = {to appear}
url = {http://purl.org/dm/papers/Meurers.Dickinson-17.html}
}