Grammar Errors by Slovenian Learners of Japanese: Corpus Analysis of Writings on Beginner and Intermediate Levels

This paper presents the construction of a corpus of writings by Slovene learners of Japanese as a foreign language at the beginner and intermediate levels and an analysis of the grammar errors contained within it, with the purpose of providing a simple and effective means of acquiring data on errors made by students of Japanese as a second language. Additionally, an error analysis of the grammar errors in the corpus and a comparison of the most common errors found on both levels, reveals the types of errors that carry over from the beginner to the intermediate level, negatively affecting the learning process. By compiling and analyzing a collection of 182 written texts written by Japanese learners, 492 cases of grammar misuse were observed on the beginner and 564 on the intermediate level. A comparative analysis of the most common types of grammar misuse on each level highlights the types of errors that seem to carry over from the beginner to the intermediate level. The findings can be useful to Japanese language learners as well as teachers. Furthermore, the learner’s corpus created in the process marks the first step towards the creation of a larger, annotated and publicly accessible learner corpus of writings by Slovenian learners of Japanese to be used for further research in the field of second language acquisition.