Introduction

Larissa Goulart

Montclair State University

Ingrid Veloso

Montclair State University

ABOUT THE PROJECT

This project is the result of an effort to introduce corpus linguistics tools and techniques to pre-service teachers. All chapters in this Open Educational Resource (OER), with the exception of the tutorials, were written by undergraduate students in TESOL and Linguistics, who had no previous knowledge of corpus linguistics before working on this project. Our hope is that with this OER,  we can inspire other in- and pre-service teachers who are new to corpus linguistics to develop their own pedagogical materials using corpora.

But, let’s start from the beginning: What’s corpus linguistics?

Corpus linguistics is a research methodology that involves the analysis of large collections of language data, or corpora, in order to identify patterns and regularities in language use. Since the late 80s and early 90s, linguists have suggested that corpus tools have the potential to revolutionize language teaching (see Johns, 1986; Rundell & Stock, 1992; Johns, 1991; among others). These researchers point out a number of advantages to using corpus in the classroom, including:

• Authenticity: Corpora allows students to explore natural language data.
• Autonomy: Students can act as language detectives and identify language patterns on their own.
• Specificity: Teachers can use corpora that reflect the type of discourse or disciplinary practices that students will encounter in their daily lives.

Even though the call for the inclusion of corpora in the language classroom has been around for many years, teachers still encounter many challenges when working with corpora. First, not all teachers have access to computers in their schools or classrooms, which means that they can connect to online corpus tools during their classes. Even when access to technology is not a problem, learning about the functionalities of corpus tools might be a challenge. That is, teachers need to understand the potential of corpus tools  in order to decide when to add it to their lesson plans or not.

Several teacher educators and researchers have sought to bridge this gap between classroom and corpora in a number of publications. In Using Corpora in the Language Classroom (2010), Reppen illustrates how corpora can be used in the classroom with model activities and tutorials for teachers. In Corpus Linguistics for English Teachers (2018), Friginal presents different corpora tools and shows ways that these can be used to make the language classroom more engaging. Several other publications also address this gap (see Pérez-Paredes & Mark, 2021; Pérez-Paredes, 2020; O’Keefe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007). These books give teachers a general introduction to corpus tools and illustrate how they can be used in language teaching.

Recently, we have seen the publications of compilations of corpus-based or corpus-informed pedagogical materials that provide teachers with a model that they can use or adapt in their own classrooms. In Teaching English with Corpora (2022), for example, Viana presents 70 lesson plans that integrate corpora and language learning; in Creating Corpus-Informed Materials for the English as a Foreign Language Classroom (2021), LeFoll and her students present 16 corpus-informed activities for the English classroom; and, in Using Language Data to Learn About Language: A Teachers’ Guide to Classroom Corpus Use (2023), Pinto and colleagues introduce 15 language teaching activities that incorporate corpus in the English, Spanish and Portuguese classrooms.

This e-book adds to this growing list of OERs for language teachers. In this book, we present two tutorials on how to use online corpus tools, COCA and Sketch Engine. Then, we introduce 14 activities that incorporate corpus tools and techniques in the classroom.

BOOK STRUCTURE

This project started in a Corpus Linguistics course for TESOL undergraduate students at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. As part of this course, students learned how to use the different functionalities of online corpus tools, such as COCA and Sketch Engine. Then, students used these tools to answer their own questions about English grammar and vocabulary (e.g., What’s the difference between the words ‘cheater’ and ‘traitor’? When do we use ‘have a go at’?).

Later, undergraduate students at Montclair State University got involved in the project. Building on the initial corpus exploration written by the Brazilian students, MSU students used online corpora to create pedagogical activities that could be used in the English language classroom.  This collaboration between Brazilian and American students is reflected in the structure of the chapters. Chapters are divided into a corpus demonstration and practice exercises based on corpora.

All chapters start with a summary of the goal of the class and a description of the level and context where this lesson plan would work best.

See example from Chapter 13

Following this summary, the authors explain their motivation to explore this topic. This usually relates to their own struggles as learners of English as a Second/Foreign Language. Then, the lesson plan is divided into two phases. In the first phase of the class, we find a step-by-step guide of how teachers can use online corpus tools to teach about the topic addressed in the chapter. This initial description also includes highlights of interesting findings from the corpus analysis, and summaries that the teacher could use with students, in case they do not have online access to corpora. The second phase of the lesson plans involve practicing with the corpus findings. These practice activities take different forms in each chapter, from fill-in the blank exercises to crosswords, mad libs, and kahoot quizzes.

Chapter 1: Sketch Engine Tutorial

In this chapter, basic and advanced tools of Sketch Engine corpus manager are illustrated using the British National Corpus (BNC) as an example. These tools and techniques can then be applied to other corpora available on Sketch Engine.

Chapter 2: Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) Tutorial

This chapter aims to introduce the key functions and features of the English-Corpora website, using COCA. This tutorial covers Lists, Collocates, Word, Compare and other functions available in COCA.

Chapter 3: Using gender-related vocabulary

Designed for intermediate learners of English, this chapter introduces students to gender identities in English and how to differentiate between the use of the terms “transgender” and “transsexual”.

Chapter 4: Using COCA to explore the differences between ‘through’ and ‘toward’

In this chapter, the grammatical functions of the words “through” and “towards” are analyzed through two different learning lenses: as taught by a grammar book and as they are presented in a corpus (COCA). This task is geared towards intermediate to advanced learners of English.

Chapter 5: How to use ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’ when talking time

This chapter is designed to aid beginner students of English in understanding the difference between the commonly used English prepositions “in”, “on”, and “at”.

Chapter 6: What can we learn about “take”, “have”, and “make” from COCA?

With intermediate and advanced English learners in mind, this chapter aims to explain the differences between “have”, “make”, and “take” with an analysis of the data presented from the Cambridge Grammar of English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

Chapter 7: “You didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor”: Using COCA to explore the difference between synonyms

Designed for intermediate and advanced learners of English, this chapter is geared towards aiding students in distinguishing between the meanings and usages of the English words “cheater” and “traitor” with data from COCA.

Chapter 8: Using Sketch Engine to explore the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’

With the help of the English Web 2020 Corpus (enTenTen20) and the British National Corpus (BNC) on Sketch Engine, the goal of this chapter is to clarify the differences between these words for students with the help of corpus-informed data.

Chapter 9: “Do I have a ‘problem’ or a ‘trouble'”: Comparing synonyms with COCA

Using COCA and the BNC on Sketch Engine, this chapter is designed to teach students the difference between the words “problem” and “trouble” by viewing their contexts and grammatical constructions as presented in corpora.

Chapter 10: Understanding the difference between “have” and “be”

Designed for beginners of English of all ages, this chapter aims to aid students in differentiating the meaning and usages of “have” and “be” with the help of SKELL tools.

Chapter 11: “I am the subtitle?”: Using COCA to explore false cognates between Portuguese and English

This chapter utilizes COCA to teach students how to develop some understanding of examples of false cognates so that they can form sentences with these words.

Chapter 12: Talking about time: “time”, “hour”, and “o’clock”

This chapter aims to teach beginners of English to understand the difference between “o’clock”, “time” and “hour” by observing the usage of these essential terms in COCA and Linggle.

Chapter 13: ‘Have a go’ at COCA: Using corpus tools to learn more about expressions in English

Geared towards intermediate learners of English, this chapter aims to help students understand the English phrase “have a go at” in different contexts with the help of tools available on COCA.

Chapter 14: Can/May/Could you open the window? Using SKELL to study modal verbs

Aimed towards beginner learners of English, this chapter introduces the use of SKELL by Sketch Engine to help students understand modal verbs “can”, “could” and “may” for everyday usage.

Chapter 15: Using the BNC to explore the use of “have”, “make” and “take”

This chapter aims to utilize the BNC on Sketch Engine to teach students how to use the main verbs “make”, “take” and “have” and observe their differences in various contexts.

Chapter 16: FYI: How to use CORE to learn about online acronyms

In this chapter, searches and queries on the Corpus of Online Registers of English (CORE) are used to understand acronyms commonly used on the internet.

We hope you try one, two, three or maybe all activities in this book!

Feel free to make each activity your own: change the exercises, add different tasks, complement it with readings from your textbook, etc. If you do so, please share with us your experience using these tasks  (email goulartl@montclair.edu).

The full OER may be cited as follows:

• Goulart, L. & Veloso, I. (Eds). (2023). Corpora in English Language Teaching: Classroom Activities for Teachers New to Corpus Linguistics. Open Educational Resource. Montclair State University. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7900420

References

Friginal, E. (2018). Corpus linguistics for English teachers: Tools, online resources, and classroom activities. Routledge.

Johns, T. (1986). Micro-concord: A language learner’s research tool. System, 14(2), 151-162.

Johns, T. (1991). Should you be persuaded: Two samples of data-driven learning materials (Vol. 4, pp. 1-16). Classroom Concordancing. Birmingham: ELR.

Le Foll, Elen (Ed.). (2021). Creating Corpus-Informed Materials for the English as a Foreign Language Classroom. A step-by-step guide for (trainee) teachers using online resources (Third Edition). Open Educational Resource. https://pressbooks.pub/elenlefoll. CC-BY-NC 4.0. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4992504.

O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From corpus to classroom: Language use and language teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Pérez-Paredes, P. (2020). Corpus linguistics for education: A guide for research. Routledge.

Pérez-Paredes, P., & Mark, G. (Eds.). (2021). Beyond concordance lines: Corpora in language education (Vol. 102). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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

Reppen, R. (2010). Using corpora in the language classroom. Cambridge University Press.

Rundell, M., & Stock, P. (1992). The corpus revolution. English Today, 8(3), 21-32.

Goulart, L. & Veloso, I. (2023). Introduction. In L. Goulart & I. Veloso (Eds). Corpora in English Language Teaching: Classroom Activities for Teachers New to Corpus Linguistics. Open Educational Resource. Montclair State University.