Chapter 6. Japanese L2 corpora and SLA research

Abstract

This chapter overviews learner corpora and corpus-based acquisition studies in Japanese to illustrate the advantages of using them in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. It introduces learners’ oral and written production corpora, including I-JAS, the largest Japanese learner corpora in the world. Through separate studies, including one PT-based study, we illustrate how corpora can be utilised to obtain results beyond what can usually be achieved with small-scale studies, which contributes toward overcoming the recurring limitations of current SLA research. Analysing learner corpora enables immediate crosslinguistic triangulations and greater generalisability of findings regarding interlanguage systems. Corpora-based studies allow SLA researchers to consider new perspectives and areas that have to this day been underexplored because of the paucity of data or lack of typological spread and comparability.