2 - Using corpora in the language classroom

Summary

Introduction

Since the mid 1990s, dictionaries based on corpora (collections of naturally occurring texts) have been widespread in English as a second language (ESL) classrooms. These dictionaries, based on large collections of natural language, not only provide learners with information about word meanings, but also provide important information about word use. As a natural extension of using dictionaries based on corpora, teachers have become increasingly interested in using information from corpora to inform and create language-learning materials. In the 1990s resources such as Johns (1994) and Tribble and Jones (1997) provided teachers with some ideas and guidelines for ways to use corpus information in the classroom. Now, with more and more corpus-informed or corpus-based teaching resources becoming available (such as: Focus on Vocabulary (Schmitt and Schmitt 2005); the Touchstone series (McCarthy, McCarten and Sandiford 2006/2006); and Real Grammar (Conrad and Biber 2009)), this interest has continued to grow and has even expanded to teachers themselves wanting to bring corpora into language classrooms. Using corpora in the language classroom can provide teachers and students with several advantages. Corpora can provide a rich source of authentic material, and, therefore, examples of the language students will encounter outside the language classroom. Corpora can also provide students with many examples of the target feature (e.g. a vocabulary item or grammatical structure) in a concentrated manner, to help them better understand the feature and its contexts and cotexts of use.

Before discussing some ways to bring corpora into a classroom, a word about corpora and corpus linguistics is in order. A corpus is a collection of naturally occurring texts that is usually stored on a computer (see Biber, Conrad and Reppen 1998 for more on the characteristics of corpora). If the texts are stored on a computer, it is possible to search texts for particular features. A number of tools are available for searching corpora (e.g. AntConc, MonoConc, WordSmith – see the Appendix for more information). It is also important to note that the term ‘text’ is used to refer to either spoken or written discourse. The spoken texts are usually transcribed into a written version, and in most cases the audio files are not available.