Investigating Chinese Learner Corpus Research and Chinese learner corpora: Main features, critical issues and future pathways

Despite the increasingly wide-ranging accessibility of L2 Chinese learner corpora and achievements in Chinese Learner Corpus Research (CLCR), there are no studies which provide a critical analysis of the key features and limitations of this expanding field. This study therefore aims to fill this lack in the literature by both investigating the actual state of CLCR and existing L2 Chinese learner corpora and outlining their main features and critical issues. First, the paper introduces the development and current trends in CLCR, particularly emphasizing the widespread use of multi-method approaches in this field. Second, it focuses on design issues of L2 Chinese learner corpora, identifying main characteristics and limitations. The paper shows that L2 Chinese learner corpora present many gaps concerning language-related, task-related, and learner-related criteria. Gaps in learner corpus analysis and annotation are also discussed. Third, the paper presents the first analysis conducted to date that categorizes existing L2 Chinese learner corpora according to mode (written, spoken and multimodal) and size (large-scale and small-scale). Finally, the article directs attention toward challenges in this field, concluding with future directions for CLCR and its intersections with Second Language Acquisition (SLA) to support L2 Chinese teaching and learning