Research methods_Corpora in Language Learning and Teaching

elective courses

Welcome but not mandatory: Students have previously participated in classes on the methodology of teaching a foreign language, they can plan language classes, create their own teaching materials and develop a lesson plan.

Classroom

The aim of this course is to familiarize students with various applications of corpora in foreign language teaching. The issues covered include an introduction to a range of corpus resources and tools available in the Internet, and methods of applying corpus data in designing pedagogical materials targeting vocabulary, phraseology, grammar, discourse and specialized languages. Examples of applications are drawn from the practice of teaching English as foreign languages.

The aim of this course is to familiarize students with various applications of language corpora in foreign language teaching. The issues covered include an introduction to a range of corpus resources and tools available in the Internet, with a special emphasis on resources and tools designed specifically for language teaching. Students will learn about the methods of corpus analyses relevant for language instruction as well as tool functionalities that facilitate them. The course will also present ways of using corpus-derived linguistic information for teaching vocabulary, phraseology, grammar and discourse organization, as well as methods of working with corpora with language learners (so-called data-driven learning). The course will also discuss the application of corpora for syllabus development for teaching specialized languages. Students will compile their own mini-corpora and learn how to analyze them for pedagogic purposes. Examples of applications of corpora will be drawn from the practice of teaching English and Polish as foreign languages.

Student's workload:

• Participation in classes 30 h

• Preparation for classes 15 h

• Preparation of the term project 20 h

Total 65 h

Format of work: instructor’s presentations, students’ presentations tasks involving analyzing corpus data, and individual work outside the classroom

Corpus Linguistics textbooks for language teachers

Flowerdew, L. (2012). Corpora and Language Education. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230355569

Friginal, E. (2018). Corpus Linguistics for English Teachers: Tools, Online Resources, and Classroom Activities (1st Edition). Routledge.

Harrington, K., & Ronan, P. (Eds.). (2023). Demystifying Corpus Linguistics for English Language Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan.

O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From Corpus to Classroom: Language Use and Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Reppen, R. (2010). Using Corpora in the Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press.

Timmis, I. (Leeds B. U. (2015). Corpus Linguistics for ELT: Research and Practice. Routledge.

Corpus-based resource books

Anderson, W., & Corbett, J. (2017). Exploring English with online corpora: An introduction (Second edition). Palgrave Macmillan.

Bennett, G. (2010). Using Corpora in the Language Learning Classroom: Corpus Linguistics for Teachers (Illustrated Edition). Michigan ELT.

Poole, R. (2018). A Guide to Using Corpora for English Language Learners. Edinbourgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-a-guide-to-using-corpora-for-english-language-learners.html

Viana, V. (Ed.). (2022). Teaching English with Corpora: A Resource Book (1st edition). Routledge.

Corpus-based online resource materials

le Foll, E. (Ed.). (2021). Creating Corpus-Informed Materials for the English as a Foreign Language Classroom. Pressbooks. https://pressbooks.pub/elenlefoll/

Pinto, P. T., Crosthwaite, P., Carvalho, C. T. de, Spinelli, F., Serpa, T., Garcia, W., & Ottaiano, A. O. (2023). Using Language Data to Learn About Language: A Teachers’ Guide to Classroom Corpus Use. The University of Queensland. https://doi.org/10.14264/3bbe92d

After completing the course

• The student is familiar with corpus resources available on the web and is able to use corpus analysis tools.

• The student is able to prepare activities based on corpus data or involving leaners' use of corpora.

• The student is also able to develop a specialized language syllabus based on corpus analysis.

• The student is able to create corpus-based teaching materials for learning a foreign language.

• Completing all class assignments

• Preparing one/two corpus-based teaching activities

• Completing a project involving:

- creating a mini-corpus of specialized language and analysing it for pedagogic purposes

- preparing a lesson plan involving corpus-based materials and activities

- writing a report

Final mark:

• 70% -- end-of-semester project (min-corpus, its analysis and a lesson plan)

• 20% -- one/two corpus-based teaching activities developed by students

• 10% -- mean mark for homework assignments