The ICNALE Corpus and what it tells us about how Japanese university students speak and write in English

Presenter Martin Spivey gave a talk about the ICNALE Corpus, and what we can learn about Japanese university students’ speaking and writing tendencies based on the data it has collected.  By looking at the statistics of keyword usage and comparisons between Japanese students and native speakers, we were able to see some clear trends and distinctions in word complexity, common errors, and set phrases and sentence structures.  There was also discussion about testing formats and writing/speaking prompts, and how these might influence the output of the students.  We were also introduced to different types of corpora, with several being freely available for use and research.