The International Corpus of Learner English. Version 3

Abstract

Since the release of the first and second editions in 2002 and 2009 respectively, the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) has been used in a wide range of research projects internationally, served as the basis for many MA and PhD theses and generally played a key role in promoting the field of learner corpus research. The first version of the corpus contained 2.5 million words produced by learners from 11 mother tongue backgrounds. The second version was larger in terms of both words (3.7 million) and language backgrounds (16). The current version differs from the previous ones in two major ways. Firstly, it is even larger than the previous versions, as it includes data from 25 mother tongue backgrounds, amounting to over 5.5 million words. In addition, unlike the preceding versions – which were both distributed on CD-ROMs – ICLEv3 is hosted on a brand new web-based interface. This allows not only for easier and more flexible access but also for the regular inclusion of new subcorpora as they are completed, thereby highlighting the fundamentally dynamic nature of the ICLE project. Based on the abundant feedback that we have received over the years from scholars using the corpus, the functionalities that were already available in the previous versions of the ICLE have been enhanced significantly. The enhancement of the concordance tool and the corpus download facilities, for instance, is intended to answer the growing concern for the study of internal variability and individual differences in learner data.

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