• error analysis
• learner corpora
• pronunciation errors
• second language learners

In this study, I analyse the ISLE corpus, an already existing learner corpus, focusing mainly on the pronunciation errors that the German and Italian protagonists of this corpus make. Learner corpora are collections of authentic texts produced by foreign or second language learners, stored in an electronic format. Aside from their precious role as a resource for second language acquisition research, they can be used to identify typical difficulties of learners of a particular learner group (e.g. intermediate or advanced learners) or learners of a particular native language (e.g. German or Italian learners of English), and thus provide a basis for the identification of frequently occurring mistakes in learner language. Chapter 1 presents a small history of theories for error interpretation. The historical, linguistic, and psychological backgrounds of different hypotheses are reviewed in this chapter, with a particular focus on pronunciation and phonological issues. In the Chapter 2, I focus on second language acquisition, both as a personal process of learning a second language and as the scientific study of this process. In Chapter 3, I introduce learner corpora: how they look like and what they can be used for. Chapter 4 is the methodological chapter entirely dedicated to the ISLE corpus. Chapter 5 contains the analysis of the pronunciation errors produced by the German and Italian English language learners of the ISLE corpus. In Chapter 6, I will present the most interesting outcomes of this thesis.