A corpus – based needs analysis of Nigerian English learner:
A pilot study of secondary learner language
Alexandra Uzoaku Esimaje
Department of English Studies
Benson Idahosa University
Benin City, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
Given the existence of hundreds of indigenous languages in the country, English usage is often said to be influenced by the learners’ first language (L1) and this has been the object of most research in second language acquisition. But, this study argued that a very expansive data of learner language is needed to identify the types of errors that persist in the language productions of secondary school children, and to objectively establish their sources. This will demonstrate whether pedagogic attention should be paid more to inter-lingual errors or intralingual errors. Therefore, this research undertook a pilot project to compile a specialized mini corpus of learner language in the context of secondary schools in order to identify and classify their performance errors. The research is cast within the tenets of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, which compares corpora produced by different sets of learners or native and learner varieties of language. For the corpus compilation, 60,000 words of written English were collected from secondary school children who are from different ethnic backgrounds. The data was subsequently transcribed, annotated and analysed. The outcome of this research would enable teachers, textbook writers and curriculum developers to redirect their efforts to the learners’ specific areas of need.