Theoretical and methodological design of the Corpora of Chinese Learners of Spanish

Abstract

This paper deals with corpora of learners and is part of a doctoral research entitled Attenuation in the written expression and interaction of Chinese learners of Spanish, whose objective (to characterize the use of attenuation in the written production of these learners) and the lack of data to achieve it, leads to the design of a corpora of learners, a source of reliable empirical data for the analysis of the characteristics of the interlanguage of these learners. Starting from the idea that a corpus always responds to a previous design, this work pursues the theoretical and methodological design of a computerized corpora, representative of the oral and written variants of Spanish as a foreign and second language of Chinese learners, in order to have a database that allows us to carry out rigorous research on their interlanguage and identify the main difficulties in their learning, in order to design appropriate didactic strategies to solve them. The Dialectical-Materialist Method is assumed as the general method of sciences and philosophical support, and theoretical and empirical methods are used, namely, historical-logical, analysis-synthesis, systemic-structural, documentary analysis and modeling. The main results show the theoretical systematization on linguistics of corpora and corpora of learners and, from it, the theoretical and methodological design of a specialized, sample and representative, multilingual, mixed, open and transversal-oriented corpus; in addition, the conception of three stages for the creation of Corpora of Chinese Learners of Spanish: design, data collection and construction.