Learner Corpora in Corpus‐Informed Instruction: Moving Toward an Asset‐ and Genre‐Based Model

Abstract

Learner corpora have been used extensively in corpus research to identify gaps and errors within learner writing but have rarely been directly used in corpus‐informed instruction (CII). Importantly, scholars in CII have pointed out that “it is as important to see what learners can do as well as what they can't” when using learner corpora (Boulton & Thomas, 2012; p. 13). Learner corpora can also offer greater alignment with the genres students are writing (Seidlhofer, 2002). In our Brief Report, we take up Lu, Casal, and Liu's (2021) call for greater synergy of genre and corpus pedagogy by examining the impact of using a learner corpus to enhance students' language awareness and genre‐specific knowledge within an English as an Additional Language (EAL) first‐year writing classroom. We also move beyond error analysis to encourage an asset‐based model to learner CII (Staples, 2022).