Learner corpus research in Hong Kong: past, present and future

摘要: As a field of research closely connected with second language acquisition, teaching and learning, learner corpus research (lcr) has garnered interest among language teachers and researchers in Hong Kong, where English is one of the two official languages (alongside Chinese) and also one of the chief mediums of instruction in education. In view of this unique situation, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of lcr within different teaching contexts in Hong Kong and identifies some major research trends and issues. Through this survey of the development of lcr in the region, we find that great advances have been made over the past three decades. Specifically, the object of analysis has shifted from cherry-picked, isolated textual features to operationalised parameters such as metadiscourse markers, lexical diversity, and syntactic complexity to study learners’ language output. Despite the progress that has …