Analyzing Linguistic Development Across Grade Levels Using an Error-Tagged Learner Corpus of L2 Writing

Abstract

This study investigates developmental patterns in the written English of Japanese EFL learners from the 7th to 12th grade by analyzing a corpus of approximately 30,000 words. The corpus was annotated with 37 types of error tags to examine error patterns and changes across different parts of speech and error type. The analysis revealed some findings. While overall error rates generally decreased with school year progression, there was a temporary increase in the ninth grade, third year of junior high school. This increase suggests that students at this stage attempt to use more complex linguistic features or newly learned grammatical structures. Regarding syntactic development, the analysis showed a clear development from simple to complex sentences, with senior high school students increasingly using more sophisticated structures involving conjunctions. These results provide insights into the characteristics of Japanese learners’ linguistic development across different parts of speech and demonstrate qualitative changes in language use as students’ progress through school years.