1. CORPUS TOOLS
FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING
(PART 2)
LANGUAGE TEACHING WORKSHOP SERIES
2013-2014
Center for Language Acquisition (CLA)
http://language.la.psu.edu
and
Center for Advanced Language Proficiency
Education and Research (CALPER)
http://calper.la.psu.edu
The Pennsylvania State University
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2. GOALS OF THE WORKSHOP
 Review:
 What is a language corpus?
 Question:
 How are corpora used for language teaching and
learning?
 Model:
 What do corpus-based classroom activities look like?
 Explore:
 Creating a corpus-based learning activity
 Discuss:
 Share your ideas
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3. PRESENTERS
 Brody Bluemel
 Department of Applied Linguistics & Asian Studies
 Chinese, ESL, German
 Edie Furniss
 Department of Applied Linguistics and IECP
 Russian, ESL, French
 Meredith Doran
 Center for Language Acquisition/Applied Linguistics
 French, Spanish, ESL
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4. WHAT IS A LANGUAGE CORPUS?
 A collection of ‘real world’ language samples (written texts,
oral transcriptions, audio/video)
 Principled selection of language (one language, one historical
period, one genre type, a mix of written genre types—e.g. academic,
journalistic, literary, blogs, etc.)
 Usually electronic and searchable
 Used for language research and teaching
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5. WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF
CORPORA?
 COBUILD (Bank of English—650 million words)
 MICASE (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English)
 Brigham Young University Corpora
 Various
 Includes COCA, Corpus of Contemporary American English)
 corpus.byu.edu
 Dialect corpora
 Chinese: Phonemica.net
 English: ICE (International Corpus of English)
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6. WHAT CAN CORPORA SHOW US?
 Word frequency
 What are the top 500 words in this language? How often does
the word ‘jocular’ or ‘pickle’ occur?
 Word clusters
 Which short expressions are common? (e.g., ‘you know what I
mean,’ ‘do you want me to’)
 Collocations
 Which words typically go together? (e.g. weak coffee, weak
soup?)
 Concordances
 Examples of particular words/phrases in context
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7. CONCORDANCE
 Example of concordance for modal ‘CAN’
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8. BENEFITS OF CORPORA FOR LANGUAGE
TEACHING
 More accurate descriptions of language than
textbooks/intuitions
 Exposure to contextualized, meaningful language
in ‘real’ usages
 Examples of specific registers/genres of language
 Reference tool for independent/autonomous
language investigation and learning
 Cited from: Jonathan Smart, Northern Arizona University
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9. OTHER BENEFITS FOR LEARNERS
 Gives learners exposure to non-textbook language
patterns
 Gives learners access to a much larger language
sample than classes can normally provide
 Can answer questions about everyday usages (Do
people really say/use this? Which constructions
are common? Which vocabulary is frequent/rare?
Is this word or feature typical in speech/writing?)
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10. SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS OF CORPORA
FOR TEACHING
 Use contextualized examples for quizzes, activities,
explanations
 Share lists of frequent words or expressions with learners
 Research features of language for lesson design (e.g., Are the
modals can, could, may, might, shall, will equally used? Should they be equally
taught?)
 Pre-select materials from corpora to help learners
discover/explore particular language patterns
 Have students search corpora using a search tool
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11. WHAT TO TEACH WITH A CORPUS?
 Vocabulary
 Word meanings in context, combinations/collocations, parts
of speech, common expressions, differences in meaning
 Grammar
 Differences between similar forms, how forms are used in
context
 Pragmatics
 Greetings, genre features and their cultural meanings (e.g. job
letters, CVs, personal letters, etc.)
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12. EXAMPLE: VOCABULARY
 Modal ‘CAN’
 Explain to students that CAN has four functions:
 ability
 possibility
 permission
 request
 Students find examples of each type of usage via
corpus search
 Might evaluate frequency of usage types, connotational
values, pragmatic applications
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13. USEFUL CORPORA FOR TEACHERS
 Lextutor—useful for study of vocabulary
 MICASE (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English)
 SACODEYL—European Youth Language, pedagogical focus
 Brigham Young University Corpora (corpus.byu.edu)—
including COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English)
 Backbone—European Pedagogic Corpora for Content &
Language Integrated Learning
 Linguee
 The Internet!—Webcorp as search tool
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14. WAYS LEARNERS CAN WORK WITH
CORPORA
 Illustration: Looking at data
 Interaction: Discussing and sharing observations
and opinions
 Intervention: Providing learners with hints or clearer
guides for seeing patterns
 Induction: Learners making their own rules for
particular features
(Flowerdew, 1999)
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15. EXAMPLES/DEMONSTRATIONS
 Brody
 Parallel Corpora for Reading Comprehension and Lexical
Acquisition.
 www.parallelcorpus.com
 www.linguee.com
 Edie
 Lexical study: Color terms
 Lextutor
 Russian National Corpus
 Meredith
 Pragmatic choices: “I would like to” in Spanish
 Linguee
 Word Reference Forum
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16. PARALLEL CORPORA FOR READING &
WRITING
 Activity: 12 Zodiac Animals
Using www.parallelcorpus.com, students were asked
to:
Read the story
Identify 5 new vocab items
Identify the 12 zodiac animals
Write 10 sentences using new vocabulary
Summarize the story in your own words
 12 Zodiac Animals Story
 Vocabulary Term Search: "看"
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17. OUTCOMES
Beginning level students able to read through and
comprehend the meaning of the story.
Students learned to use new vocabulary items with
multiple meanings and uses.
Sample sentences:
你看，那是一只好看的老虎。
Look, there’s a good-looking tiger.
我看到一个球。
I saw a ball.
Reference for constructing grammatical sentences.
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18. PARALLEL CORPORA FOR OTHER
LANGUAGES:
 www.linguee.com
 Explore complex terms/structures.
 Identify stories/ content-based websites to work through.
 Reference for using new terms and constructs correctly.
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19. PRAGMATICS OF REQUESTING IN SPANISH
 Goal:
 Raise students’ awareness of polite request forms in
Spanish (e.g., “I would like . . . “ vs. “I want . . . “)
Step 1: Brainstorming
Have students generate some ways to ‘request’ in
Spanish:
 Yo quiero . . . (“I want . . .’, present tense)
 Me gustaría . . . (“It would please me . . . “, conditional)
 Deseo . . . (“I desire . . . “, present)
 Quisiera . . . (“I was wanting . . . “, imperfect subjunctive)
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20. Researching Requests (‘asking politely’)
Step 2: Illustration (looking at data)
Ask students to search Linguee for translations of “I
would like . . .” in Spanish
What translations of “I would like” do you find?
What words tend to follow these constructions? (Verbs? Nouns?
List at least 6 constructions you found.)
In what kinds of texts does each option appear? Formal? Informal?
What patterns do you notice?
Do the forms seem to differ in meaning in some way?
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21. Researching Requests (‘asking politely’)
Step 3: Interaction
 Ask students to report on patterns they observed
 Discuss their observations
Step 4: Intervention
 Consult Word Reference Forum (or similar sites) for
further evidence/perspectives on usage
 Offer teacher explanation, intuition, evidence
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22. Researching Requests (‘asking politely’)
Step 5: Induction
Students try to formulate their ‘rules’ for usage
(Step 6: Application)—(optional)
Students create role plays
Use a range of forms they found
Focus on politeness/appropriateness
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23. EXPLORE & CREATE
 In small groups:
 Go to the CLA website at language.la.psu.edu
 Click on the ‘Corpus workshop 2’ Upcoming Event (left
column)
 Scroll down, Click on the Google Doc link
 Identify a sample item or set of items for a corpus-based
inquiry in a language you teach.
 Greetings
 Close synonyms (e.g., happy vs. psyched)
 Color terms and their applications
 Register differences
 Slang words and their uses
 Idiomatic expressions
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24. DISCUSS
 Ideas and applications of corpora generated in
your group
 Key features or aspects of corpora we haven’t yet
considered?
 Questions?
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25. THANK YOU!
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