ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the combination of several methods to investigate the acquisition of a second or foreign (L2) language, namely the use of learner corpora and experimentation. Traditionally, learner corpora and experimentation have been associated with different paradigms, namely learner corpus research and second language acquisition research, respectively. Since S. Granger, several studies have explored the possibility of combining learner corpora and experimental data to gain a better understanding of learner language and how it is acquired. A literature review shows that when learner corpus data are combined with experimental data, the latter most often represent L2 non-production data, in which learners are not required to actually produce language, but to carry out a linguistic task. Most experimental data used in combination with learner corpora are either elicitation data, which require learners to produce certain linguistic items, or non-production offline data, which record the outcome of a linguistic task.
