抄録
The application of corpus linguistics to the collection and study of learner-produced texts offers a
wealth of possibilities for linguistic inquiry that are limited only by the inquisitiveness of the
language researcher. Furthermore, the field of learner corpus research has the capacity to shed light
on largely unknown aspects of the process by which language learners acquire a target language.
This article will describe the design, collection, and initial analysis of a pilot corpus of writing
produced by Japanese EFL learners studying in a tertiary English program in Japan. The writings
that comprise the first phase of the corpus were collected in the Fall semester of 2018 and the
Spring semester of 2019 at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Japan and consist of all
the writing assignments that a selected group of students were required to complete throughout each
semester. The primary objectives of this project are to investigate the process of language
acquisition by Japanese students through the exploitation of a learnersʼ corpus (Kennedy, 1998) and
to produce a resource for investigating gaps in the studentsʼ interlanguage in order to address them
in course curricula (Nesselhauf, 2004, Granger, 2002). The topics of discussion will include a
description of the process of corpus design and text collection, a discussion of word frequencies in
comparison with a native English corpus (LOCHNESS), and a discussion of the word coverage of
the New General Service List (NGSL) and the New Academic Word List (NAWL). The findings
from the coverage data of the two word lists suggest that students might benefit from curriculum
that focuses on words from the NGSL that are outside of its most frequent 1000 words, and an
increased emphasis on the teaching of the academic vocabulary included in the NAWL.
