This document discusses how corpus data and techniques can be used in the Ecuadorian English classroom. It begins by introducing what corpora are and how to read concordance lines. It then explains several ways that corpora can enhance English language teaching, such as showing the most common meanings and uses of words, highlighting differences between textbook grammar and real usage, and identifying typical word groupings. The document advocates bringing corpus techniques into the classroom through hands-on activities and provides resources for teachers.

1. MAKING ENGLISH REAL:
THE USE OF CORPUS DATA
ANDTECHNIQUES INTHE
ECUADORIAN CLASSROOM
Anna M. Gates
UniversidadTécnica Particular de Loja

2. Welcome to the world of corpora
 Activity 1 (20 minutes)
 Instructions Part 1 (10 minutes)
Read the first page of your packet
 Superfoods: ProtectYour Body by Eating Right
Highlight the target word
Group 1: Food
Group 2: Like
Group 3: May
Group 4:Veggies
Group 5: Family
Group 6: Which

3. Part 2 Instructions
Write
concordance lines
on board (5
minutes)
What can we
notice about the
target word or the
other words
around it?

4. Let’s explore the world of corpora
 What are corpora?
 Collections or databases
of language
 What are Concordance
lines?
Today we are going to focus on
English Language Corpora and how
to take advantage of the wealth of
information in our own classrooms

5. Reading concordance lines
 Concordance lines indiscriminately include some
number of words before the main word and some
number of words after.
 This means there are often incomplete sentences
 However, the general idea can be understood
 Students need to note where the action takes
place or what the situation is

6. Let’s look at….Hire
 experts recommend that new co-ops hire paid staff. Professionally run stores
 I'm going to hire people to market across the country.
 to frighten companies who hire undocumented workers.
 In some cases, caregivers hire home health aides or support staff
 information about fire closures. Hire Big Sur Hiking Guides,
 has a new dilemma:Who will he hire to maximize Rose?
 coach K, who turned out to be a sharp hire after hoops insiders

7. Revolution of corpus linguistics in the
past 25 years
 Yesterday’s corpora
 Survey of English
Usage (early 1960’s)
 Brown Corpus (1964)
 Lancaster-Oslo-
Bergen (1978)
 Today’s corpora
 COBUILD
 British National
Corpus
One million words Over 250 million words

8. What can corpora tell us about
English?
 Frequency of words
What is the most frequent word in the
English language?
The
Why would we care to know what the most
frequent words in English are?

9. The meanings of bet
 As we know, the same word
often has more than one
meaning. Corpora can help use
know what meaning of a word is
most frequently used
 For example: bet (13,648 hits)
 To gamble: as in “he bet $1 on the
game” (fewer than 100)
 A supposition: “I bet that you and your
family are happy” (172)
 An option: as in “our best bet is to use
our voice” (724 hits)

10. How textbooks treat vocabulary
 Diana was surprised when
the dinner guests appeared
an hour early.
 The meaning is to be or
become physically present
 Terribly urgent, a phrase
presented in a basic level
Textbooks often misrepresent the
most important uses of words, or
the most important words to use

11. How textbooks treat vocabulary
 Concordance lines for appeared
 Less than 62% of the examples use the same
meaning as the text.
 The other significant meaning is to indicate a
probability.
 Terribly urgent only appears 5 times in a 37 million
word corpus.
Corpora help us see how native English speakers most often use the
words

12. Contexts of words
 In addition to finding out the most common
meanings of words, corpora can help us know
under what situations the words are most
commonly used.
 For example
 “Break out”
Let’s look at this in a corpus

13. Making the learning of words
meaningful
 The activity we have just completed demanded
observation and critical thinking, two essential
skills that good teachers will develop in their
students
 Students will be unlikely to forget the meanings
and context of the word when it is actively
learned.

14. Gender in English?
 As we know, the English language doesn’t have a
gender consideration in its syntax, however there
are some words that are more commonly used
when talking about women (or men) that wouldn’t
be used with the other sex.
 Can you think of any?
 A corpus can help us.

15. Gender in English?
 Let’s consider the word “taciturn”. This means
habitually silent, reserved, or uncommunicative . Do
you think that it is most often used when describing
men or women?
 Let’s look at the corpus
 8 of 31 unsure of the sex of the people referred to meaning
75% of the use of the word is with men and 25% of the
time doesn’t provide enough information to know for sure.

16. Are we teaching real English
grammar?
 Corpus evidence shows that much of the grammar
typically taught from textbooks is not as relevant in “real
life” communication as they lead us to believe.
 For example, reported speech.
 Typical textbook example:
 “I’m coming to see you tomorrow”
 Reported speech: “He said he was coming to see me tomorrow”
 In actual usage:
 “He said he`s coming to see me tomorrow”
 “He said he’d come tomorrow”
Textbook grammar shouldn’t be discarded, but it should be
complemented by real usage examples based on corpus
evidence

17. The fine art of collocation
 Collocation is the typical groupings of
words, or words that tend to go
together
 Learning these will make the EFL
students’ production more natural.
 When there are similar expressions in
Spanish and English, L1 interference is
common.
 Examples from advanced Ecuadorian
speakers of English
 “Discuss about”
 “Catch attention”
 Use of “do” and “make”

18. What to look for:Working with
students and concordance lines
 Part of speech of the word(s) that precedes or
follows a particular word.
 Let’s look at the word Grow
 What can you tell me about this word?

19. No computers in class? No problem
 Using concordance activities is recommended at all
levels.
 Before attempting to use concordance lines in class, it
is important that:
 The students have a good learner dictionary
 You teach them how to read concordance lines
 You teach them how to write their own concordance lines

20. First activity
 Identify some aspect of the language students are studying in their textbook
(vocabulary or grammar).
 Locate an authentic reading source that contains several instances of the word or
grammatical structure, ideally this should have been previously read for communicative
purposes
 Ask students to reread the material, but have them highlight the focus word or
structure
 In groups ask them to write concordance lines for all of the occasions in which the word
was found
 Ask them to identify all the examples that have the same meaning and use as they have
studied in their textbook
 Ask them to guess the meaning, part of speech of example that don’t seem to have the
same meaning

21. Useful websites
 Ananova
 http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_105441.ht
ml
 Corpus of American English
 http://www.americancorpus.org/
 The Free Dictionary
 http://www.thefreedictionary.com
 Tower of English
 http://towerofenglish.com/literacynetcnnsfarchives.h
tml

22. References
 Fox, G. (2008). Using corpus data in the classroom. In B.
Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language
teaching (pp. 25-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
 Haugnes, N. & Maher B. (2004). NorthStar reading and
writing. NewYork: Pearson Education
 Willis, J. (2008). Concordances in the classroom without a
computer: Assembling and exploiting concordances of
common words. In B.Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials
development in language teaching (pp. 44-66). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press

23. agates@utpl.edu.ec