Features of Speech in a Corpus of Learner English CMC: the case of "a lot of"

The study investigates the quantifier expression a lot of in a learner corpus of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and compares learners’ use of "a lot of" with that of other quantifiers in order to ascertain whether learner English produced by means of the computer is more influenced by speech or by writing. The quantifier "a lot of" was chosen because besides being the most frequent three-word sequence in the CMC corpus, it is among the most frequent clusters of native-speaker speech (Biber et al., 1999). Since studies of learner English found that learners tend to use expressions which are more typical of native-speaker speech in writing and vice-versa, the hypothesis investigated is that learner English produced in CMC exhibits more register awareness and that learners change their language according to the communication medium they are using.