This paper considers the issue of the norm in the context of learner corpus research and its implications for foreign language teaching. It seeks to answer three main questions: Does learner corpus research require a native norm? What corpus-derived norms are available and how do we choose? What do we do with these norms in the classroom? The first two questions are more research-oriented, reviewing the types of reference corpora that can be used in the analysis of learner corpora, whereas the third one looks into the pedagogical use of corpus-derived norms. It is shown that, while studies in learner corpus research can dispense with a native norm, they usually rely on one, and that a wide range of native and non-native norms are available, from which choosing the most appropriate one(s) is of crucial importance. This large repertoire of corpus-derived norms is then reconsidered in view of the reality of the foreign language classroom.