Error analysis in a learner corpus from spanish speakers EFL learners: A corpus based study
María Victoria Pardo
Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia
This study was conducted to identify and analyse the most common errors in the written output from learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at university level in Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. Students were placed in different levels according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Europe 2001) (CEFR). The data was collected through the methodology of corpus linguistics with the compilation of a learner corpus from university students aiming to complete their bachelor degree. The analysis of the data was based on Corder's theory about Error Analysis (Corder 1981) and following the guide from the description of errors given by James (James 1998). Errors were tagged using Louvain University tagger (Estelle et al. 2005) in order to obtain comparable results with similar work worldwide. The analysis finds that among eight error categories proposed by Louvain's tagger the most recurrent are the grammatical errors. This paper shows a preview of the results from the study that is part of a Doctoral thesis and will show its final results in 2018.