Detecting learning disorders in students' written production in the foreign language: Are learner corpora of any help?

Abstract

This paper reports on the possibility to detect learning disorders whenconducting Computer-aided Error Analysis (CEA). The study of alongitudinal learner corpus compiled at the Universidad de Jaen (Spain)and error-tagged with the Universite Louvain Error Editor (Hutchinson,1996; Dagneaux, Denness, Granger and Meunier, 1996) reveals that thedisorder of written expression, i.e. dysorthographia, may be detected inthe students' production in the foreign language. Failure in recognisingsymptoms of this disorder may lead to incorrect interpretations of theCEAs, as the errors found in a learner corpus may be misleadinglyattributed to the student's language acquisition process rather than tohis or her learning disorders.