Introducing the CORYL Corpus: What it Is and How We Can Use it to Shed Light on Learner Language

Abstract

This article presents CORYL (CORpus of Young Learner language), and demonstrates how using the corpus can help to reveal or shed further light on many phenomena which are manifested in the written English language of Norwegian school pupils. The paper begins by introducing CORYL, then focuses on learner language and the role of corpora in the study of this. Separate sections follow, devoted to what we term Computer-aided error analysis and Interlanguage analysis (not involving errors). Within these sections, extracts and other findings from CORYL-searching are presented to illustrate what we believe CORYL is able to indicate about the language of these learners.