Class 3Corpora in language teaching

Current trends in FLTCommunicative Language TeachingTrends within CLTauthentic languagecontextualised languagefocus on formlearner independence/autonomylanguage awareness

Corpora in FLTapplication 1 - a tool for teachersapplication 2 - a tool for learners

Application 1More accurate description of languagefrequency of words and grammatical featuresmeanings of wordsextended units of meaning phraseologycollocationsIdentifying problematic areas for L2 learners (learner corpora)Syllabus design (especially ESP courses)Production of teaching materialsauthentic exampleslearners dictionaries

More accurate description of languageInformation on word frequency in dictionaries example from Collins COBUILD Dictionary

frequent word

infrequent word

More accurate description of languageArrangment order of word meaningsexamples from Oxford and Longman Dictionaries

OALD 1974core meaning first

LDCE 2003Look at the next slide. Notice which meaning is listed as the first one. Why?

The Academic WordlistHere is a corpus-based list of words that are particularly frequent in academic English, irrespective of the discipline

http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/academic/

Identification of problematic areas

This/that/these/thoseThe following slide shows how frequently determiners are used by two groups of Polish upper-intermediate (Comp2) and advanced (Comp4) learners of English as well as native-speaking expert writers journalists (BNCWA).Can you see any problems in the use of determiners by Polish learners of English?

The following two slides illustrate possible post-modification patterns of the determiner those. Study the table. Can you see any differences in the post-modification patterns between Polsih learners of English and native expert writers?

Application 2Data-driven learning (Tim Johns, University of Birmingham) students consult a corpusdiscovery learningincreases motivation and interestthe results are more lasting

DDLOption Athe teacher sets the task and asks students to consult pre-selected citationsunedited concordance lines the teacher is more in control and knows what students will find

Option APresentation stagelooking for examples for a particular word/phrase/structure in a corpusstudying concordance lines to look for different meanings, collocations, colligations or translations (in the case of parallel corpora)Practice stagefinding missing words in concordance lines

DDLOption Bthe student (together with the teacher) looks for an answer to a particular problem that has arisen from the students language usemore open-ended and unpredictable

Tim Johns Kibbitzers http://lexically.net/TimJohns/index.htmlMICASE Kibbitzers http://micase.elicorpora.info/researchers/micase-kibbitzers