[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Based on your reading of this article , add your ideas on the following points below:

• Three things you learnt from the article
• Two things you found interesting and want to apply to your own teaching context
• One thing you are still not sure about

By the way, if you would like to respond to a particular post, look at the top right of the post and use the button ‘Reply’. This way, your response will be posted below the post of your colleague.

It is also a good idea to add the username that appears below their photo, that is the one that starts with @. This way, your colleague will be notified that someone has responded to them. Have fun!

[Li Hua]

By reading this article, I learned that there are corpus applications in various language classes. Corpus use in the classroon is not as complicated as buying or installing a new software. Corpus is partcularly useful to improving writing. I am interested in how to apply corpus in translation class anf make corpus a helpful tool fo rstudents to do self-correction. But looking over parallel concordance and make a choice of the best equivalent word are still time-consuming.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Thank you @lihua. I guess most of us find corpora useful for writing instruction because the majority of corpora are written corpora; they are easier and most cost-efficient to design and compile compared to spoken corpora that require recording, automatic transcription, manual editing, tagging, etc. If you are interested in spoken corpora, there is MICASE (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) and BASE (British Academic Spoken English) as well as the BNC Lab by Lancaster University. MICASE platform is easy to figure out and BNC Lab comes with a concise manual; BASE will be easy to figure out too because we will be focussing on Sketch Engine, so you will be able to apply the same search skills.

[Chris Richards]

1. I already had a hunch, hence my partcipation on this course, but the article makes the point that using corpora in the classroom is easier than I perhaps imagined. I was both shocked and unsurprised, I’m aware of the contradiction (!) by facts about the lack of awareness of corpora (p34) and how little they might drive effective teaching. I hadn’t thought about how a lack of access to computers needn’t be a hindrance, and that the comparison with the single classroom dictionary (p36) was very useful.
2. As I noted in my introduction on padlet, my interest in following this course was driven mostly by more advanced learners who use English in academic/business contexts and often in the written form. Thus, the “ideal world” suggestions that Frankenburg-Garcia summarises, for example tasks that involve finding the difference between near synonyms in the target language or how cognate vocabulary might be used differently, as well as looking for collocation (p35) are the kind of the thing that I would like to use in my classroom. In addition, the use of corpora to correct their own texts (p44) is also something I would specfiically like to teach some of my students.
3. Other than learning the skills necessary to incorporate these approaches into my practice, I don’t think I’m left with any other questions after reading the article.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Thank you @chris-richards we will look into collocations and collocational differences in Units 3 and 4, so hopefully our guides and tasks will give you an idea how to approach this corpus technique in the classroom. Regarding error correction, I could perhaps suggest a couple of readings I found enlightening when it comes to the use of corpora for error correction.

Dolgova, N. and Mueller, C. (2019) ‘How useful are corpus tools for error correction? Insights from learner data’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 39, pp. 97–108. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2019.03.007.

Satake, Y. (2020) ‘How error types affect the accuracy of L2 error correction with corpus use’, Journal of Second Language Writing, 50, p. 100757. doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2020.100757.

You can search StarPlus (via MUSE – My Services), but let me if you have any issues and I can share the PDFs with you.

[Chris Richards]

Thanks for those suggested readings @anastasios – I’ll take a look.

[Diana Freeman]

What I learned:

1.       The negative connotation of ensued

2.       The websites providing general tutorials on corpora and language teaching

3.       Rather than presenting corpora and risk spinning off on a tangent, taking too long etc. presenting ‘a useful website’ with a set of step by step instructions of what to click and what to enter to find out X

 

What I found interesting

1.       I liked the concrete examples the article provided about creating supporting language exercises

2.       I appreciated the acknowledgement of practicalities getting in the way of using corpora and the advice regarding how to overcome these.

 

One thing I am still not sure about

I don’t know how to use COCA – I would like to learn this to then incorporate it into my teaching

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Hi @deefree I totally agree with you about the importance of guiding students step-by-step and demonstrating the value of a resource/website with concrete examples and applications, and this something you will hopefully notice about this course. By the way, we will not focus on COCA but if you are accessing it via  https://www.english-corpora.org/, I am more than happy to answer any specific questions you might have. I have an account and have used it a bit in the past, so I can guide you with the interface a little. Concepts we will cover on the course e.g. concordancing, collocations, n-grams, etc. are transferrable to other corpus resources, but there is always the element of understanding a different interface and the types of queries it allows.

[Raymond Ingram]

hi, the main thing that I learned was that the corpora can be easily incorporated into the classroom, and that it is not as difficult as commonly perceived.

I really like the activities that encourage students to think about the meaning of vocabulary by looking at the contexts in which it is used. I think this will encourage students to think about vocabulary in a new way.

At the moment I have no specific questions

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Hi @raymond That’s true. I feel that the way most of my students approach vocabulary learning is a little old-fashioned. I remember myself being 17 (that’s 22 years ago!) and making vocabulary lists of new words and their Greek translation, only to go through and memorise before exams. So, yeah it is a bit of a revelation for them when I make them examine 3-4 words and focus on various types of vocabulary knowledge e.g. meaning, grammar, pronunciation, collocations, etc.

[Lorine Oluoch]

hello everyone,

I have greatly made use of the English dictionary, grammar and relevant English course books to help my learners acquire English Language. Knowing that copra can immensely help makes me eager to  introduce it in class and let my learners know how easy and interesting English language acquisition can be.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Hi @lorine yes corpora can supplement published or in-the-house materials we use for sure. By the way, what dictionary do you tend to use? Most dictionaries today are created by drawing from really large corpora.

[Paul Middlemas]

Hi all

I learned a lot form this article. I’ve never used corpus tools in class (or perhaps once or twice but some time ago) and only really had a still image of a list of concordances around a word in my head, so this made it all a little bit more colourful and approachable.

As @deefree mentioned, the concrete examples in the article were very useful.. Was interesting to learn how it could be used to help students with L1/L2 translations, e.g. flagging false friend translations. I also hadn’t really considered how it could be used to help with spotting grammatical patterns around specific words and associated it mainly with vocabulary (not sure why)… The idea of the parallel corpus was also new…

Aside for the specific examples, was interesting to read about corpora being used in production of language, not just to help with recognising patterns of use, which is perhaps what you (I) would usually associate it with. The idea that students can use corpora themselves in autonomous & not-so-complicated ways, such as with the parallel corpus, or to check specific phrases etc. was a new concept. Also, that teachers in the examples actively avoided explaining what a corpus is; I think the complexity of how it works (lists, websites etc.) can put you off using it as a tool, so this approach sounds wise!

Something to know more about would be to get a better grasp of practical use for using specific websites and to become more imaginative and creative in how corpus can be used…

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Hi @paul-m it’s great to hear that many ideas are new as long as they inspire you to explore them further hehe I’m curious about parallel corpora too and have experimented with them a little, but obviously using English and my L1, Greek. I’m attaching a screenshot to show you what it looks like. I searched for the word etsi, and as you can see from the English translation, it can correspond to various forms, not always correct (see the red square). But, yeah you are in good hands here – you’ll finish the course with useful practical skills.

[Jianying Zhang]

The most interesting thing that I found in this article is that corpora cannot only been integrated to everyday language classrooms, but also can be used to promote learner autonony. I practiced this immediately after I read the article when I check my son’s compsition. He worte a sentence “As his classmates get in him, they find Jack is very interesting”. I searched the usage of “get in” on sketchengine and showed him the concordance of the phrase. He appeared to be very interested in the collocation and more highly motivated to learn English.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

That’s amazing @jianying-zhang how old is your son? If he’s quite young and more interested in general English, you might want to show him a simpler platform such as Skell (see link) or the BNC Lab (see link).

[Jianying Zhang]

My son is 13 years old, eight grade. I’m going to try Skell or the BNC Lab. Thanks for letting me know them!

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

My pleasure @jianying-zhang

[Osanka_R]

Hi all,

The most interesting thing for me was the focus on how corpora can be used for direct facilitation of language skills in the language classroom. I had only thought corpora can be used for vocabulary building only. The real-life ELT classroom examples were also illuminating to get the idea better. Also, another important factor is that corpora can help students any time (either before, during, or after) of the process of language production. Learning the term ‘concordances’ was also interesting; but it’s something I have to learn more.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

@osanka_r Glad the reading gave you some new ideas about the use of corpora in the classroom. I personally like the idea of using them before or after a writing activity to facilitate learner autonomy. As for concordances, you’ll get plenty of input and practice with concordancing in this unit, so do let us know later if you have any questions.

[Anna Smajdor]

Three things I learnt from the article.

1. The choice of the ‘soft approach’ to use corpora in the classroom is a happy medium when the teacher has to follow a syllabus and a course book. Now, ‘soft approach’ seems to be the right direction in using corpora in my teaching.
2. Corpora are a precious source of inspiration for teachers, especially when they want to respond to their learners’ needs.
3. I did not realize that corpora used to be so underestimated in teaching English as the author says. On the other hand, it does not seem that teaching with corpora is very popular in my professional environment.

Two things I found interesting:

1. I found it interesting that the author noticed the discrepancy between classes conducted by linguists and normal language teachers. Deservedly, these two groups of teachers are treated in the article separately.
2. Another interesting aspect of the article is, in fact, the author’s approach towards the use of corpora in teaching. They are regarded as the source of authentic examples and inspiration for teachers when they prepare more customized exercises for their groups.

One thing you are still not sure about:

1. I am not convinced that individual ‘hands-on’ corpus consultation is an efficient way of working with students when they are members of a larger group. At least part of such individual practical corpus consultations should be done in class.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

Hi @anna-smajdor thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I understand the point you are making about individual hands-on consultation, but I guess it depends on the activity the students are doing e.g.

• Students writing as a group – one has the role of the ‘corpus researcher’ and helps the group with language
• Students editing the same piece of writing individually, then present their corrections/improvements to the group including information on what they found in the corpus
• Students editing their own individual piece of writing after tutor’s feedback

In all three tasks, the teacher monitors and helps students the corpus searching. Obviously, these would best work with students having their own laptops in class instead of sharing a classroom computer.

[Anna Smajdor]

Hello,

thank you very much for your suggestions, which are a missing element for me. While working with a group of students, I do not want to leave anyone behind. Sometimes, it is not an easy task, as student work at a different rate. However, it might turn out to be useful if you would like to take them all to the next stage in their learning process.

[Anastasios Asimakopoulos]

That’s understandable @anna-smajdor I guess the hands-on approach comes after they have had training on how to use the tool and sufficient practice in the classroom. In that case, I guess it’s okay to give a little more of our attention to those who require it the most and allow the more autonomous students to work on their own.

[Anna Smajdor]

Thank you very much for clarification and support.

[shuhua Wang]

Corpus is useful in Intensive reading class as well. Let students find out the collocations by themselves ,which can be a fun for them

[Yong XIAO]

3 things I’ve learned:

1. It is important that they realize that corpus use in the classroom needn’t involve buying or installing new software, needn’t involve building corpora, needn’t involve teaching learners how to create their own corpora and needn’t take up much time

2. Corpora can complement all sorts of language reception activities and there is no need to create special corpora for this.

3. Corpora can be used to boost incidental learning, to promote learner autonomy and to create customized exercises for a specifific group of learners.

2 interesting things:

1.  The listening comprehension exercise using corpora to show language reception and corpora.

2. The pre-writng exercise to show language production and corpora.

1 thing I’m still not sure about:

To what extent should we use corpora in class teaching? And whether it is time-consuming to use corpora for language teaching?

 

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