Dear colleagues,
As announced at LCR2024, we are pleased to confirm the formation of a new Working Group on Metadata in Learner Corpus Research, established under the aegis of the Learner Corpus Association (LCA) and in collaboration with the CLARIN K-centre for Learner Corpora (https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc/clarin-knowledge-centre-for-...).
This initiative follows the successful release of the second version of the Core Metadata Schema for Learner Corpora (LC-meta), a milestone that reflects our collective commitment to advancing the field. To understand the rationale behind LC-meta, we invite you to read our recently published open-access article in the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.24010.paq. Alternatively, if you prefer listening to a lecture, you can tune into a talk given by M. Paquot at the Corpus Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2023 online seminar series: https://www.um.es/languagecorpora/2023/09/14/the-core-metadata-schema-for-l2.... The schema itself is downloadable at: https://doi.org/10.14428/DVN/AAUEM2.
The Working Group will focus on evaluating and refining the schema, promoting its adoption, and addressing metadata-related challenges in learner corpus research. It will also work towards integrating the schema into relevant infrastructures and developing user-friendly interfaces that enhance accessibility. We believe that by working together, we can significantly enhance the quality, accessibility, and impact of learner corpora.
As a first step, we invite interested colleagues to express their interest in joining the working group by contacting us at kc-l2corpora@uclouvain.bemailto:kc-l2corpora@uclouvain.be by January 20. We extend our thanks to everyone who has already reached out and will be in touch shortly. Due to busy schedules over the coming months, we have decided to schedule the first WGT meeting for early spring 2025. This additional time will allow us to better organize the event and ensure we can share updates on accessibility and user-friendliness.
In the meantime, we would greatly appreciate hearing from colleagues who have already attempted to use the schema in new corpus compilation projects. If that is the case, we would be delighted to discuss your experiences with you!
We look forward to your active participation and to collectively driving forward this important aspect of learner corpus research.
Best regards, Magali Paquot, Jennifer-Carmen Frey, Alexander König, and Egon Stemle