{"id":5779,"date":"2011-12-19T15:28:54","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T15:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eltchat.org\/wordpress\/?p=5779"},"modified":"2011-12-19T15:28:54","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T15:28:54","slug":"using-corpora-in-our-teaching-what-is-available-and-how-can-we-best-use-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/2011\/12\/19\/using-corpora-in-our-teaching-what-is-available-and-how-can-we-best-use-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Using corpora in our teaching: what is available and how can we best use it? &#8211; #ELTchat Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/alastairjamesgrant.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/its-all-about-the-context.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-246\" title=\"It's all about the context\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/alastairjamesgrant.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/its-all-about-the-context.jpg\" width=\"273\" height=\"185\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Using corpora in our teaching: what is available and how can we best use it? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A quick word for the uninitiated! <a href=\"http:\/\/eltchat.org\">ELTChat<\/a> is a twitter-based forum where keen ELTers meet on Wednesday morning and\/or evening (depending on just HOW keen they are) and hotly debate a voted-for topic.<\/p>\n<p>After which, some kind (if misguided) soul offers to write a summary of the chat, its <strong>pert points and lusty links<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s what happened on Wednesday morning at 12pm GMT&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Many of us have either <strong>fallen in love<\/strong> with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Corpus_linguistics\">corpora<\/a> or looked at them and gone, \u201cwow, cool&#8230; err&#8230; now <strong>how on earth could I use that in class&#8230;?<\/strong>\u201d Well fear not! ELT Chat is here to save the day \u2013 with ideas and links galore&#8230; millions of links, in fact&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Although Marisa Constantinides\u2019 \u201csmiley\u201d emoticon was charitably humouring my calling Wednesday morning\u2019s ELT Chat<strong> \u201clinktastic\u201d<\/strong> (I\u2019ll get my coat) it kinda was. People seemed to be hitting the \u201cpaste\u201d key as frequently as they were the \u201celtchat\u201d hashtag.<\/p>\n<p>This at least demonstrated the awareness of material out in the big wide webby world, and gave everyone (as now I give to you) <strong>a smorgasbord of yummy material<\/strong> to get browsing through for your classes.<\/p>\n<p>Below is the summary, with the categorised links at the end of the text.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How to use corpora<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA\">\u201cshow me the money!\u201d<\/a> moment&#8230;while many of us had seen and used corpora, there was some confusion about HOW to use them effectively.<\/p>\n<p>A summary of the ideas and points raised:<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ideas for general use:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Many use corpora for teacher training but not so often with students \u2013 why?<\/li>\n<li>Useful if the student asks a question about a word in a very specific situation and the teacher is not sure which way is most common.<\/li>\n<li>Checking intuitions for academic English and translation.<\/li>\n<li>We needn\u2019t get too academic &#8211; Google is one of the best corpora around, put in the word or phrase, hit search and students can see the item in context. Although a little dodgy for younger learners as they could end up being directed to <strong>sites with more \u201cX\u201ds in them<\/strong> than most words do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">In-class activities:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For EAP students &#8211; when they want to check if the verb+noun combo in their essay is correct or not.<\/li>\n<li>For EAP\/ESP &#8211; take most common collocation from business corpus and ask students to discuss why they are the most common. And discussion on the<strong> intonation<\/strong> of these common expressions.<\/li>\n<li>Ask students to choose 5 collocations from a text, then look to see how common\/useful etc they are.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Incorrect collocations infogap<\/strong> &#8211; one learner has list of collocations, one learner has error-strewn text.<\/li>\n<li>Get students to write up a <strong>corpus of their teacher<\/strong> to find the most common expression you use!<\/li>\n<li>Just record one single lesson and tell them to create a corpus of common errors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Dictionaries vs. concordances<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Much more cognitive value so vocabulary is going to stick.<\/li>\n<li>Dictionaries can be used with concordances to give students many in-context examples and then personalise them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>So a tricky topic but well executed \u2013 many thanks to all involved! <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We even behaved ourselves when Shaun was out of the room dealing with a plumber.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A final thought&#8230; if corpus data reflects authentic use&#8230; and authentic use is not necessarily correct&#8230; are we causing problems for our students?<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>And now the promised links&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Articles on using corpora<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Article on using corpora and whether it\u2019s just a fad<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tesl-ej.org\/ej32\/a1.html\">http:\/\/www.tesl-ej.org\/ej32\/a1.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Using corpus to write teaching materials &#8211; article<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peo.cambridge.org\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=52:the-real-thing-using-corpora-to-write-language-training-materials-by-bill-mascull-&amp;catid=2:general-articles&amp;Itemid=8\">http:\/\/peo.cambridge.org\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=52:the-real-thing-using-corpora-to-write-language-training-materials-by-bill-mascull-&amp;catid=2:general-articles&amp;Itemid=8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jamie Keddie on the what and the how of corpora<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.onestopenglish.com\/skills\/vocabulary\/corpora\/\">http:\/\/www.onestopenglish.com\/skills\/vocabulary\/corpora\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Article by Nik Peachy on using concordancers<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.teachingenglish.org.uk\/articles\/concordancers-elt\">http:\/\/www.teachingenglish.org.uk\/articles\/concordancers-elt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Article re. how to use the American English online corpus<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/call4teachers.blogspot.com\/2009\/10\/largest-web-based-genre-balanced.html\">http:\/\/call4teachers.blogspot.com\/2009\/10\/largest-web-based-genre-balanced.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Using concordancers in the classroom \u2013 how and why<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.ict4lt.org\/en\/en_mod2-4.htm#_Toc481294155<\/p>\n<p>Using a concordancer to create a vocabulary syllabus<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.yearinthelifeofanenglishteacher.com\/2011\/02\/how-i-developed-an-academic-vocabulary-syllabus\/\">http:\/\/www.yearinthelifeofanenglishteacher.com\/2011\/02\/how-i-developed-an-academic-vocabulary-syllabus\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">List of corpora<\/span><\/p>\n<p>British national corpus<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk\/\">http:\/\/www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Spoken language corpus<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.netspeak.org\/\">http:\/\/www.netspeak.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Massive corpus from Princeton<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wordnet.princeton.edu\/\">http:\/\/wordnet.princeton.edu\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This website lets you search and browse pedagogic corpora in 7 European languages.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sacodeyl.inf.um.es\/sacodeyl-search2\/\">http:\/\/sacodeyl.inf.um.es\/sacodeyl-search2\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>British National corpus base but more user-friendly<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/corpus.byu.edu\/bnc\/\">http:\/\/corpus.byu.edu\/bnc\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>List of learner corpora around the world<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uclouvain.be\/en-cecl-lcWorld.html\">http:\/\/www.uclouvain.be\/en-cecl-lcWorld.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wide selection of concordance links<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nsknet.or.jp\/~peterr-s\/concordancing\/conclinks.html\">http:\/\/www.nsknet.or.jp\/~peterr-s\/concordancing\/conclinks.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bookmarks for corpus-based linguistics<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uow.edu.au\/~dlee\/CBLLinks.htm\">http:\/\/www.uow.edu.au\/~dlee\/CBLLinks.htm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Visual representation thesaurus<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.visuwords.com\/\">http:\/\/www.visuwords.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Corpus of academic spoken English<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/m\/micase\/\">http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/m\/micase\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Great concordancer for learners \u2013 words in context with their collocations<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.just-the-word.com\/\">http:\/\/www.just-the-word.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Collection of spoken English<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.univie.ac.at\/voice\/\">http:\/\/www.univie.ac.at\/voice\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Concordancer with filters<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.webcorp.org.uk\/live\/\">http:\/\/www.webcorp.org.uk\/live\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Concordancer that compares two expressions \u2013 which is right and which is wrong?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/phras.in\/\">http:\/\/phras.in\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Funny but useful:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>21 English accents<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k&amp;feature=youtu.be\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k&amp;feature=youtu.be<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Word games<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wordia.com\/\">http:\/\/www.wordia.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>US vs. Brit English accents<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE&amp;feature=youtu.be\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE&amp;feature=youtu.be<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A dictionary of very, very modern English<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/\">http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Chav dictionary<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajarnforum.net\/vb\/the-virtual-pub\/479-the-blinglish-language-of-chav-lushinnit.html\">http:\/\/www.ajarnforum.net\/vb\/the-virtual-pub\/479-the-blinglish-language-of-chav-lushinnit.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using corpora in our teaching: what is available and how can we best use it? A quick word for the uninitiated! ELTChat is a twitter-based forum where keen ELTers meet on Wednesday morning and\/or evening (depending on just HOW keen they are) and hotly debate a voted-for topic. After which, some kind (if misguided) soul&hellip; <br \/> <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/2011\/12\/19\/using-corpora-in-our-teaching-what-is-available-and-how-can-we-best-use-it\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eltchat.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}