How DIY corpora can be used for doing research

1. USING DO-IT-YOURSELF
CORPORA IN EAP:
A TAILOR-MADE RESOURCE FOR
TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
Maggie Charles (2018)
2020/11/10

2. Types of Corpora
● General vs. specialized corpora (ex.Air Traffic Control Speech corpus)
● Written vs. spoken corpora
● Synchronic vs. diachronic corpora(ex.Helsinki Corpus of English Texts)
● Monolingual vs. multilingual corpora
● Comparable(ex.ICE: International Corpus of English) vs. parallel corpora(ex..TANGO)
● Native vs. learner corpora
● Online (ex.BNC, Cobuild, WebCorp) vs. DIY – customized
● ….
● ….

3. Do you consult any corpora when you write/edit your
paper?
Yes No

4. What kinds of
corpus do you
mostly use for your
composing and
revising papers?

5. Do-it-yourself (DIY) corpora:
small scale databases of electronic texts built by
users for specific, limited and local purpose
DIY corpora Standard corpora
Size small very large
Domain/Genres usually one specific
domain/genre
various domains/genres
Compilers non-professional professional
Purpose serve the needs of a
specific group of users
available for different
purposes

6. DIY corpus use for teachers and course
developers
Prepare for courses of the areas that the teachers have no or little
knowledge.
Examples:
Writing course for doctoral theses

7. Using DIY corpus to prepare for a writing course
for doctoral theses
Field: Materials Science
Corpus size: eight successful theses written by native speakers of
English (300,000 words)
Thesis 1 Thesis 2 Thesis 3 Thesis 4 Thesis 5 Thesis 6 Thesis 7
File: A File: I File: LR ...
Thesis 8

8. Using DIY corpus to prepare for a writing course for
doctoral theses
Discover generics features of an unfamiliar discipline
Provide evidence to underpin course material on the structure of the thesis
E.g. Placing of the LR in the theses
Review of the
literature
(1 thesis)
Powder in
Tube
Developments
content-based headings

9. Using DIY corpus to prepare for a writing course for
doctoral theses
Creating tasks for the Ss to notice the step and its lexicogrammatical
realizations
Increase students’ awareness of the needs their of readers and the use of
metadiscourse markers to facilitate understanding
E.g. the step of “referring back to earlier chapter” in Introduction section

10. DIY corpus use for students
Students can create their own topic-specific resource for their
writing needs or vocabulary learning
Examples:
1. Students of Chemistry discipline search for the synonym of
“under harsh reaction conditions”
2. Students of Accounting and Finance learns domain-specific
vocabulary

11. 1. Student of Chemistry discipline (Francesca)
used DIY corpus
Corpus size: 51 research articles (198,678 words)
Purpose: to find a synonym for the adjective harsh in the phrase
under harsh conditions.
Step 1: search for concordances line to the left (←) of the word conditions
-> forcing conditions and harder conditions -> under forcing conditions
Step 2: search for singular form of conditions -> no hits
Step 3: search for concordance lines to the right (→) of the preposition under
-> under harder conditions and under harsher conditions
=> under forcing/hard(er)/harsh(er) conditions

12. Why not using BNC (100 million words) or COCA (560 million words)?
-> No hits of the collocation under forcing conditions in BNC and only one in
COCA
-> BNC and COCA are not made purposely for academic writing in chemistry
-> not confident to use the results.
In Francesca’s corpus: (~200,000 words)
-> Eight instances of forcing conditions
-> Only include research articles in chemistry discipline -> the collocation is
actually used in the field.
1. Student of Chemistry discipline (Francesca)
used DIY corpus

13. Participants: 94 Accounting and Finance for International Business students
Hands-on (HOn) groups: build their own corpora and use them to generate list of
Accounting and Finance terms, which were later turn into their vocabulary
portfolios
Hands-off (HOff) groups: direct use the lists generated from the same corpora to
develop vocabulary portfolios
Corpora input:
● Lecturers’ PowerPoint slides
● Seminar discussion notes
● Past test papers, etc.
2. Students of Accounting and Finance used
DIY corpus DIY corpora for Accounting & Finance vocabulary learning
(Smith, 2020)

14. Tool: Sketch Engine
2. Students of Accounting and Finance used
DIY corpus
Word
list
Word
sketch
concordances

17. HOn group were encouraged to add a column for example sentences and common
collocations from their personal corpora

18. HOn groups show slightly more improvement than Hands-off groups
2. Students of Accounting and Finance used
DIY corpus
Results

19. Students’ perceptions on learning vocabulary via corpus construction and
vocabulary portfolios
HOn groups found constructing/using vocabulary portfolio more useful than the
HOff groups did:
- HOn students perceive the vocabulary portfolio as part of a meaningful
workflow of which they had control from the start to finish.
- HOff might not have the sense of resource “owner ship”
More HOn students claimed to continue using the corpus/vocabulary portfolio after
the course.
2. Students of Accounting and Finance used
DIY corpus

20. Conclusion
● Compilation of DIY corpora is not time consuming and complicated as it seems
● For indirect use by teachers and course developers: provide access to
discipline-specific text to investigate the discourse and creating appropriate
materials for the students.
● For direct use by graduate students or research: correspond exactly to their
needs with reliable results to be used in their specific discipline.
● The skills that users gain after compiling a DIY corpus can be helpful for their
career in the long run.

21. Do you think educational levels or
English proficiency will be issues
for implementing DIY corpus in the
course?

22. How can DIY corpora
used indirectly as a
reference resource by
a teacher?

23. Building a DIY corpus (Charles, 2019)
● Select
texts
● Purpose
● size
● the quality of
language
Convert
files
● Plain text
format
● Antfile
converter
Rename
text folders
Optional
clean files
● To improve your results,
delete everything that is
not part of the running
text (e.g. author, title,
graphics)
● Try the dirty corpus first!

26. Task-based demonstration

27. Task-based (problem-solution) demo 1
● What are the words that we can use before research?
● In which section(s) of the research paper writers use
research or study/studies very frequently?
● Queried word: research/study/studies
● Corpus skills: multiple search words, sort
results,concordance plot

28. Task-based (problem-solution) demo 2
● What are the verbs we can use when we need to report/interpret
results/findings of a study?
● Queried word: finding/result
● Corpus skills: the use of wildcards, sort results

29. Task-based (problem-solution) demo 3
● How do we refer to tables, figure, formulas or
diagrams in research writing?
● Queried word: table
● Corpus skills: simple search, sort results

30. Discuss what are possible
challenges of using DIY
corpora in Taiwanese
educational or your
teaching context?

31. Affordances and Challenges of
DIY corpora

32. ● English majors wrote extended papers after compiling and examining personal corpora
for their own research purposes(Gavioli, 2009)
● Reported positive evaluations of a course in which students used personal corpora to
explore discourse functions in their disciplines (Charles, 2012)
● Corpus compilation may help learners to acquire transferable skills as well as
language,such as problem-solving and ICT (Information and communications
technology) competencies (Boulton,2008)
● Some students were motivated enough to consult and even add to their corpus after the
end of the course (Charles ,2014)
● Their students even purchased their own copies of Wordsmith Tools (Lee and Swales,
2006)
● The hands-on group (constructing their own domain-specific DIY corpora) had achieved
a slightly greater improvement in domain vocabulary knowledge than the hands-off
group (which used corpora and vocabulary lists provided by the teacher) (Smith, 2020)
Affordances

33. ● the time required for corpus construction, the validity of their selection of
research articles (2017, Charles)
● Technical circumstances, including changes of computer, or work on
multiple computers, may act as a deterrent to ongoing use of the personal
corpus (2014, Charles)
● “the small size, dirtiness of the corpora,reliability of the English in
certain papers” (2012, charles)
● These studies might not be applicable in other teaching contexts
(limited to phd participants,a lack of institutional support,manpower,
and other resources)
● Their course would not be repeated in the future because there was
no teacher to take over after them (Lee and Swales,2006)
● DDL approach in Asian context? (Smith, 2011)
Challenges

34. Direct and indirect use of Corpora
(Leech, 1997)
● A ‘direct’ use of corpora: involves the students in having
access to the corpus data themselves-ex. hands-on corpus
consultation, students are given print-outs of corpus data
to examine on paper
● An “indirect use of corpora”: the corpus data form the basis
for the construction of teaching or reference materials

36. DIY corpora as indirect use of materials
● Corpora and Materials for Accelerated German Reading for
Classicists(Eckhard-Black, C. ,2016)
The instructor used passages for translation on past examination papers to form the content of the
corpus, as the basis for creating a range of materials that students could access for self-study and
reference.
● DIY Local Learner Corpora:Bridging Gaps Between Theory and Practice
(Miller,2008)
Empirical evidence of student production can encourage teachers to reflect on their own teaching, investigate
and, where possible, address the causes of phenomena observed in the corpus.
By using authentic learner production in the classroom it is possible to foster conditions for students to notice
how their own production is different from that of a model.

37. Reflections/Critique
● Topic of DIY corpora is still underexplored
● A research design involving a control group following the same
syllabus without using corpora could be used to test the new
approach
● Whether factors such as discipline,degree level would affect use of
DIY corpus
● a larger number of respondents

38. References
● Anthony, L. (2015). AntFileConverter (Version 1.2.0) [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Available
from http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
● Charles, M. (2012). ‘Proper vocabulary and juicy collocations’: EAP students evaluate do-it-yourself corpus-building.
English for Specific Purposes, 31(2), 93–102.
● Charles, M. (2017). Do-it-yourself corpora in the classroom: Views of students and teachers. In K. Hyland & L. Wong,
(Eds.), Faces of English education: Students, teachers and pedagogy (pp. 107–123). Abingdon: Routledge.
● Charles, M. (2019). Do-it-yourself corpora for LSP: Demystifying the process and illustrating the practice. Scripta Manent, 13(2), 156-
166.
● Eckhard-Black, C. (n.d) Corpora and Materials for Accelerated German Reading for Classicists.
● Chen, M., & Flowerdew, J. (2018). Introducing data-driven learning to PhD students for research writing purposes: A territory-wide
project in Hong Kong. English for Specific Purposes, 50, 97-112.
● Lee, D., & Swales, J. (2006). A corpus-based EAP course for NNS doctoral students: Moving from available specialized
corpora to self-compiled corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 25(1), 56–75.
● Millar, N., & Lehtinen, B. (2008). DIY local learner corpora: Bridging gaps between theory and practice. JALT CALL Journal, 4(2), 61-
72.
● Smith, S. (2011). Learner construction of corpora for general English in Taiwan. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 24(4), 291-
316.
● Smith, S. (2020). DIY corpora for Accounting & Finance vocabulary learning. English for Specific Purposes, 57, 1-12.