Research interests
Corpus linguistics and the use of native and learner corpora for the description and teaching of language (data-driven learning)
Cognitive linguistics (including construction grammar), its integration with corpus linguistics and its application to foreign language teaching
Varieties of English and the link between second language acquisition and contact linguistics
Writing process and its analysis through screencasting and keylogging
Design and exploitation of spoken learner corpora
Combination of corpus data and experimentation
Empirical approaches to prototypicality in linguistics
Verb lexicon, especially causative verbs, highly polysemous verbs and phrasal verbs
Academic writing and rhetorical functions typical of academic English
Contrastive linguistics and its combination with learner corpus research
Research projects
Director of the Process Corpus of English in Education (PROCEED) project
Director of the New Englishes Student Interviews (NESSI) project
Co-director of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) project
Partner in the Corpus of Academic Spoken English (CASE) project, coordinated at Trier University of Applied Sciences
Promoter of the International Support Fund project Corpus linguistics across the Atlantic, 2023-2026
Promoter of the Hoover Seed Fund project Learner Corpus research and register variation, 2023-2025
Promoter of the project Dyslexia in L2 writing: A product- and process-based approach, funded by UCLouvain’s Special Research Fund (FSR), 2021-2023
Promoter of the Research Project Comparison of L1 and L2 writing fluency on the basis of screencast videos and keystroke log files, funded by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), 2020-2024
Co-promoter of the project Developing WriteUp, a correction tool for L2 English, funded by UCLouvain’s Educational Development Fund (FDP), 2018-2019
Member of the Louvain Multilingual Student Translation (MUST) team, 2017-
Co-promoter of the project Directionality and expertise in Empirical Translation Studies: Triangulating product and process data, funded by UCLouvain’s Special Research Fund (FSR), 2017-2020
Promoter of the project Honing students’ writing skills via the use of online tools, funded by UCLouvain’s Educational Development Fund (FDP), 2017-2019
Compiler of the Hong Kong component of the New Englishes Student Interviews (NESSI) corpus, funded by a Research Credit of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), 2016-2017
Co-promoter of the Concerted Research Action Fluency and Disfluency Markers: A Multimodal Contrastive Perspective, in collaboration with Université de Namur, funded by the French Community of Belgium, 2012-2017
Partner in the Contrastive Linguistics: Constructional and Functional Approaches Scientific Research Network of the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders (FWO), led by Ghent University, 2011-2016
Contributor to the second edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2005-2007
External member of the Concerted Research Action Foreign Language Learning: Phraseology and Discourse, funded by the French Community of Belgium, 2003-2008
Research supervision
Supervision of PhD theses
Denys Savchenko, A corpus-based study of adverbs and adjectives as markers of stance in the spoken and written language of native speakers and learners of English (co-supervision with Jane Klavan), University of Tartu, Estonia, 2022-
Yating Tao, A corpus-driven approach to the valency patterns of TAKE and GIVE in ESL and EFL, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2021-
Laurie Radar, Dyslexia in L2 writing: A product- and process-based approach, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2021-
Valérie d’Herbais de Thun, Comparison of L1 and L2 writing fluency on the basis of screencast videos and keystroke log files, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2020-2022
Laura Aguiar De Souza Penha Marion, Directionality and expertise in Empirical Translation Studies: Triangulating product and process data (co-supervision with Marie-Aude Lefer), Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2017-
Caroline Gerckens, The development of phraseological competence in L2 English. A longitudinal corpus-based study of high frequency verbs (co-supervision with Ulrike Altendorf and Sylviane Granger), Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium & Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, 2016-2020
Amandine Dumont, Fluency and disfluency: A corpus study of non-native and native speaker (dis)fluency profiles (co-supervision with Sylviane Granger), Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2013-2018
Ludivine Crible, Discourse markers and (dis)fluency across registers: A contrastive usage-based study in English and French (co-supervision with Liesbeth Degand), Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2013-2017
Samantha Laporte, The patterning of the high-frequency verb make in varieties of English: A Construction Grammar approach, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2011-2019
Member of PhD supervisory panels/committees (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium)
Thomas Prinzie, Testing the revised gravitational pull model: The case of noun concatenation in expert and novice financial translation, 2022-
Romane Bodart, Quality assessment of machine translation post-editing and human translation, 2022-
Chloé Parmentier, How does bilingualism interact with developmental (language) disorders?, 2021-
Natacha Buntinx, Negotiating multilingual sources for monolingual production: Using mixed-methods to scrutinize code glosses in academic writing, 2019-2021
Bénédicte Snyers, Le français vu de Belgique : Enquête sur les représentations linguistiques contemporaines d’une communauté francophone périphérique, 2014-2019
Maïté Dupont, Conjunctive markers of contrast in English and French: From syntax to lexis and discourse, 2013-2019
Jennifer Thewissen, Accuracy across proficiency levels: Insights from an error-tagged EFL learner corpus, defended in 2012
Verena Möller, The impact of educational setting – A study of the English passive in German EFL and CLIL learners (joint programme with Universität Hildesheim, Germany), 2010-2016
Federica Ciabarri, Discourse markers in final position: A contrastive analysis of English, Italian and Hungarian, 2010-2014
Damien Littré, A cognitive, longitudinal study of the use of the English present progressive by intermediate and advanced French-speaking learners, 2009-2014
PhD external examiner
Elaine Millar, Exploring linguistic research influence in mainstream English language teaching: The case of multi-word verbs, Universidad de Cantabria, Spain, 18 April 2023
Loulou Kosmala, A multimodal contrastive study of (dis)fluency across languages and settings: Towards a multidimensional scale of inter-(dis)fluency, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France, 3 December 2021
Susanne Oswald, Spoken corpus study: The effects of internal and external factors on the non-standard usages of English by the emerging workforce of Central Switzerland, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom [held online], 13 October 2021
Francesca Poli, Adverb + adjective collocations in a spoken learner corpus: A quantitative and qualitative approach, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Sede di Milano, Italy [held online], 21 July 2021
Abdullah Saad Al-Qarni, Applying corpus pattern analysis to learner corpora: Investigating the pedagogical potential of the pattern dictionary of English verbs, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, 25 February 2019
Laurence Romain, A corpus-based study of the causative alternation in English, Université de Lille, France, 10 October 2018
Barry Grossman, A corpus approach to metaphorically-construed self-awareness in reflexive constructions, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, 3 November 2017
Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies, The teaching and learning of English pronunciation in Spain. An analysis and appraisal of students’ and teachers’ views and teaching materials, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 14 January 2016
Sylvi Rørvik, Texture in learner language, University of Oslo, Norway, 18 October 2013
María Luisa Roca Varela, New insights into the study of English false friends: Their use and understanding by Spanish learners of English, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 30 November 2012
Beatriz Tizón Couto, Clausal complementation in contemporary English: A corpus-based study on native and learner spoken data, Universidade de Vigo, Spain, 18 October 2011
PhD preliminary examiner
Jarno Raukko, Polysemy, meaning differentiation, and the production test, University of Helsinki, Finland, October 2021