This document summarizes a workshop on using language corpora for teaching. It began with an introduction to the goals of reviewing corpora uses and exploring corpus-based activities. Examples of corpora like MICASE and BYU were provided. Corpora can show word frequencies, clusters, collocations and examples of words in context. Benefits include exposing learners to authentic language patterns. Specific applications for teaching vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics were discussed. The workshop concluded with demonstrations of corpus searches and an activity for participants to design their own corpus-based lesson.

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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