Lost in parallel concordances

Ana Frankenberg-GarciaISLA, Lisbon

Lost in parallel concordances

When are they useful?

How doyou use them?

monolingual

level of difficultyof concordances

representativenessof corpus

cognitive styleof learners

parallel

availability of corpus

Lost in parallel concordances

So when exactly are they useful?

L1 L2

Parallel concordances in L2 learning

Grammar-translation method

L1 L2

Modern approaches to L2 learning

L1 poor L2 fluency Multilingual classes Native-speaker teachers Monolingual materials

L2

• Learners use L1 schemas as templates for constructing L2 schemas Barlow (2000)

• Despite being told not to, learners often use L1 as a strategy for learning L2 Cohen (2001)

• Awareness of L1 influence upon L2 seems to help Tomasello and Herron (1988, 1989)

• Teaching Monolingual Classes Atkinson (1993) The Non-Native Teacher Medgyes (1994)

L1 revival

Parallel concordances in L2 learning

Self-access Classroom

L1 L2

Learners decide what to focus on Aston (2001)

• Queries initiated by learners

• Learners engaged in finding solutions to problems that are in the forefront of their minds

• Concordances likely to be meaningful, relevant and conducive to successful learning

Self-access

What should teachers do?

• Monolingual classes• Teachers who know L1

Classroom

But when?

But not all differences between languages are relevant to learning Wardhaugh (1970), Odlin (1989)

L1 L2 Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis

Lado (1957)

“consciousness-raising techniques may be counterproductive where the insight has already been gained at a subconscious, intuitive level.” Sharwood-Smith (1994:184)

Classroom

No use learners being swamped with language contrasts that don’t affect and could even be detrimental to their learning

So what language contrasts might help?

Negative transfer from L1 Italian Lott (1983)

Portuguese-English crosslinguistic influence Frankenberg-Garcia & Pina (1997)

IL L2 Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis

Granger & Tribble (1996)

But some IL problems can still be traced back to L1

CLI and parallel concordances in L2 learning

L1 French tonic auxiliaries Roussel (1991)

L1 Norwegian shall skal Johansson & Hofland (2000)

L1 Portuguese prepositions after N, V & Adj Frankenberg-Garcia (2000)

Classroom

•Pay attention to crosslinguistic influence •Find out which language contrasts might be worth making a particular group of learners aware of •Use parallel concordances to focus on these contrasts

Language contrast per se

Use parallel concordances to focus on IL problems that can be traced back to L1

Lost in parallel concordances

How exactly do you use them?

Unlike monolingual corpora...

L1

L2

ST

TT

Very lost...

L1 L2 ?

L2 L1 ?

ST TT ?

TT ST ?

?

L1 L2

How can I say ___ in L2?

Language production How meanings learners formulate in L1 can be expressed in L2

L2 L1What does___ mean?

Language receptionHow meanings learners don’t understand in L2 translate into L1

“actualmente”

Production & Reception

e.g. FALSE COGNATES

“actually”

L1 L2 L2 L1

+ reception - production

Don’t miss the party!

OK

And don’t lose those keys.

OK *Sorry I’m late.I lost the train.

lose

miss

perder

English Portuguese

L2 L1?“lose”

loseperder

L2 L1?“miss”

missperder

L1 L2“perder”

miss

loseperder

PRODUCTION

L1 L2 L2 L1

Different purposes in language teaching

RECEPTION

ST TT ? TT ST ?

Lost in parallel concordances

L1 L2 L1 English TT ST

Unidirectional parallel corporae.g. German-English INTERSECT

L1 German ST TT

Not much choice...

L1 L2

Bi-directional parallel corporae.g. COMPARA, CEXI, part of ENPC

ST

TT

TT

ST

How do you choose?

L1 L2ST TT TT ST

Translational Non-translational e.g. Baker (1996)

Distribution of already in COMPARA 1.6

ST35%

TT65%

Explicitation in TT

Against parallel corpora in L2 learning? Gellerstam (1996)

Have you already had lunch?

Já almoçaste?

Exposing L2 learners to translational language

can be problematic

Should I be looking at

translational L2? How can I take advantage

of the translational & non-translational

language distinction?

L1 L2ST TT

TT ST

Sheltering learners from translational L2

e.g. elements with significantly different ST-TT distributions

L1 L2ST TT

TT ST

Exposing learners to translational L2

e.g. culturally-bound concepts difficult to express in L2

Drawing attention to basic linguistic contrasts

L1 L2ST TT

TT STe.g. prepositions after N, V and Adj

L1, L2, ST and TT

Production L1L2

Reception L2L1

TTST shelter STTT

STTT expose

ST+TT TT+ST ST+TT TT+ST

Queries that focus on basic language contrasts

Unidirectional & bi-directional

parallel corpora OK in both directions

Queries affected by translational/non-translational

language distinction

Unidirectional parallel corpora

only in one direction

Bi-directional corpora OK in

both directions (but use right part

of the corpus)