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Bringing Native Speaker Corpora/ Learner Corpora into the Classroom
Presented By Sharon Hartle, Sian Morgan
Session Details
Firstly, Sharon will explore some ways in which widely available native speaker corpora such as the BNC or the examples provided in corpus mode in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, can easily be accessed to become an extremely useful language learning tool. We will also demonstrate ways of studying and extending the information provided by concordance lines in class, helping learners to notice such aspects as collocation, patterns and semantic prosody. We will also look at ways in which our learners have been encouraged to experiment with and personalise these patterns both in class and independently so that concordance lines may become an integral part of a learner centred approach to teaching.
Next, Sian will discuss the value of building a learner corpus to use as a classroom resource. Exploring corpora of learner writing helps teachers identify misuse or overuse of certain structures or lexis, and can be used as a base for personalised learner centred activities to address these problem areas. In addition, if learners explore corpora of their own work, they notice the differences between their own language use and target forms, which may help accelerate acquisition (Joyce and Burns , 1999: 48). Such analysis and classroom activities can be highly motivating., and help learners to move closer towards their language learning goals. Sian will illustrate how she has used LC of her own students' work for language awareness activities and targeted practice.
About Sharon Hartle
Both Sharon and Sian work in the north of Italy. Sharon works for the universities of Verona and Bolzano and Sian for the university of Modena and Reggio Emilia. They both have considerable experience of teaching and examining and are passionate about their students and the language learning process.
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Great to be here,I am
Great to be here,I am enjoying the conference
Thank you Sharon and Sian. I
Thank you Sharon and Sian.
I have been using the quick searches from BNC and Cobuild (which offer 2 very different views of the results) for a few years.
One excellent demonstration that I do is to show how the "future perfect" is used to refer to the past in approximately 50% of its uses (you will find links to those here:- http://www.acme2k.co.uk/Acme/acmeinfo.htm#biblio )
Past continuous examples include "was going to...but..." , often used to explain a change in plan.
As for "googlefight", some young teenagers on a summer course used it to prove how "cool" their musical tastes were, whereby the most well-known bands were deemed "uncool", and so "googlelosers" were judged to be the coolest!
Very enjoyable talk, Thank you.
Hello, You got different
Hello,
You got different results because in googlefight you forgot to use inverted comas to limit the search to the expressions "started to rain" vs"started raining". Try using the inverted comas and you'll get the same google proportion. Without these you'll get all possible combinations of the words, together or in isolation. Nice talk.
Best regards,
Aldo
Lima, Peru