The LLS research team at the Université de Savoie has created the Corpus of Academic English by second language learners (1.1 million words). The texts were written in English by second- and final-year French university students. They were receiving instruction on argumentative writing (4,500-word texts) based on in-depth consultation of other research documents and according to MLA format.
Second-year students discuss an issue related to the general culture of an English-speaking country (e.g. the privatization of health care, weapons in the USA), while the seniors analyze the language policies of an English-speaking country (e.g. New Zealand possible adoption of a bi-lingual policy in order to protect the Maori language, California’s bilingual English-Spanish schools as possible models for other US states).
This part of Scientext serves to nourish didactic applications in foreign-language learning, as initially planned in the Scientext ANR project. Furthermore, it will facilitate the comparison between the production by writers having varying degrees of experience.
ACCESS THE CORPUS (requires Firefox 2+).