Construction grammar in ICALL

The choice of grammatical framework in ICALL—the branch of CALL that applies artificial intelligence—has important implications for both research and development. Matthews (1993) argued for “choosing a [framework] that potentially meshes with SLA” (p. 5) and sketches three criteria which facilitate the crucial decision of selecting a grammatical framework for an ICALL system: computational effectiveness, linguistic perspicuity, acquisitional perspicuity. We will use Matthews ’ three adequacy criteria to review recent research in Construction Grammar and propose its application in ICALL, particularly in projects which involve the building of a student model. Construction grammar has the potential to help overcome some challenges in ICALL and to facilitate a more thorough analysis of learner language in context and thus improve our knowledge about language learning processes.