ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the pedagogically-motivated design and exploitation of corpora. The learner corpora includes data gathered from participants in various settings, in practice many learner corpora are based on data from classroom contexts. To reinforce how learner corpora are designed, and to preview the kind of research carried out with learner corpora, it will be useful to consider in some detail four specific corpora: the ICLE corpus (International Corpus of Learner English); the Cambridge English Profile Corpus; the NICT Japanese Learner English (JLE) Corpus; and the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI). It is worth noting that the LINDSEI corpus can be used in conjunction with a comparable native speaker corpus LOCNEC and a comparable learner written corpus ICLE. Both the empirical and theoretical arguments for DDL suggests that DDL should be part of the repertoire of teachers and materials writers. The twin foundations of the rationale for DDL are authenticity and autonomy.
