The Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE): A new resource for the assessment of writing proficiency in the academic register

Callies, Marcus; Zaytseva, Ekaterina

doi:10.1075/dujal.2.1.11cal

Article published In: Writing Assessment in Higher Education
Edited by Bert Weltens, Jos Hornikx, Wander Lowie, Petra Poelmans and Rebecca L. Present-Thomas
[Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics 2:1] 2013
► pp. 126–132

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The Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE)

A new resource for the assessment of writing proficiency in the academic register

Marcus Callies | University of Bremen

Ekaterina Zaytseva

Published online: 6 May 2013

https://doi.org/10.1075/dujal.2.1.11cal

Learner corpora present an option to inform, supplement and advance the way language proficiency is operationalized and assessed, and may also be used in data-driven approaches to the assessment of writing proficiency that are largely independent of human rating. The aim of this contribution is twofold: first, to introduce a new Language-for-Specific-Purposes learner corpus, the Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE), currently being compiled for the study of academic learner writing; and second, to illustrate how the CALE is useful in a text-centered, corpus-driven approach to the assessment of academic writing to achieve a higher degree of reliability in assessing language proficiency.

Keywords: language assessment, academic writing, English for academic purposes, corpus-driven, criterial features, advanced language proficiency, learner corpus research

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