Exploring modality in a learner corpus of online writing

The aim of this article is to offer a practical example of how a learner corpus can be used: to gain insights into learner language, in particular the use of modal verbs; to design pedagogic interventions based on these insights; to introduce learners to the use of corpora in a motivating way, through the exploration of a corpus of texts of which they themselves are the authors; to promote a data-driven approach to language learning. In this case, the motivations for studying the learner corpus were driven by pedagogic needs, and the approach to the analysis of the corpus is what could be described as exploratory and corpus-driven (Barlow 2005). First of all, one particular genre of writing, that of contributions to an online debate, was chosen for study, and a corpus was compiled. A preliminary analysis was carried out by means of frequency lists and concordance data for the nine central modal verbs. This was followed up by a closer, qualitative analysis and comparison with a comparative corpus. Finally, activities were developed for use with learners in the language classroom and the multimedia language laboratory. Learners are reported to be highly motivated when exploring their own language with corpus processing tools (Seidlhofer 2000). This can be a stimulating way for them to become aware of patterns of their own language use, and also a way to learn to use corpus processing tools, which are valuable instruments for language learning and exploration (Aston 2001), but which may prove challenging for undergraduate students (Chambers 2005:113).