Using collgrams to assess L2 phraseological development: A replication study

Bestgen, Yves [UCL] Granger, Sylviane [UCL]

Learner corpus research has led to a growing awareness of the significance of multiword units in foreign/second language (L2) learning and teaching (for a recent survey, see Paquot & Granger 2012). One area that is still largely under-researched, however, is that of the development of L2 phraseological proficiency. The main reason for this gap is that the types of learner corpora needed for this kind of study – longitudinal corpora, which trace the development of the same learners over time, or cross-sectional corpora containing data from groups of learners of different proficiency levels at a single point in time – are still relatively rare. A particularly adverse consequence of this lack of data is that the few studies that are carried out are hardly ever replicated on different learner corpora, making it difficult to assess the generalisability of the results. This is all the more detrimental since learner language is highly variable, with factors such as mother tongue background, foreign vs. second language learning setting and proficiency level having a strong impact on the quality of L2 productions. In line with recent calls for replication studies in a range of disciplines, including applied linguistics (Porte 2012), the current study aims to replicate a study conducted on the Michigan State University Corpus of second language writing (MSU, Bestgen & Granger 2014) on the basis of a different learner corpus, the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE; Granger et al. 2009).