Pit Corder

Stephen Pit Corder (6 October 1918 – 27 January 1990), generally known as Pit Corder, was a professor of applied linguistics at Edinburgh University, known for his contribution to the study of error analysis. He was the first chairman of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, 1967-70, and was instrumental in developing the field of applied linguistics in the United Kingdom.

Pit Corder was born at 4 Bootham Terrace, York, into a Quaker family. His father, Philip Corder (b. 1885), was a schoolteacher of English origin, and his mother, Johanna Adriana van der Mersch (b. 1887), was Dutch. Pit studied at Bootham School, a Quaker boarding school near York, where his father was a master. He went on to read modern languages at Merton College, Oxford, from 1936 to 1939.

After Oxford, Corder taught at Great Ayton Friends' School until serving in the Friends' Ambulance Unit during World War II in Finland and Egypt, having received exemption from military service as a conscientious objector. In 1946 he married Nancy Proctor (b. 1916), his second cousin, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

After the war, Corder worked for the British Council in Austria, Turkey, Jamaica and Colombia. During this time he taught classes, worked on syllabus design, and prepared new language-teaching materials. In 1957 Corder joined the school of applied linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, although he continued to be employed by the British Council. The British Council needed specialists in applied linguistics for its expansion around the world, and Corder studied for the diploma in applied linguistics in order to fulfil that need. After a year of study the British Council posted him to Nigeria, where he helped to develop English-language teaching materials for television.

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