The Use of Corpora in the Vocabulary Classroom

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1、The Use of Corpora in the Vocabulary Classroom IntroductionLexical competence recently has been identified to be the most significant predictor to general language ability (Carter&McCarthy, 1988:97); however, it is also identified by most learners to be one of the biggest challenges of language lear

2、ning (Coady&Huckin, 1997:1;Cobb, 1999). Fortunately, with the advent of technology, a new view of language learning and teaching has emerged; attempts to integrate computers as tools in language classrooms and facilitate the learning have been made.This paper suggests language corpora can enhance th

3、e quality of vocabulary teaching and learning in second or foreign language classrooms. By presenting benefits of language corpora to the pedagogy, it is hoped that this paper can be helpful to both teachers and learners who are struggling to search for an efficient way of teaching and learning voca

4、bulary. What are Corpora?Corpora, plural term of a corpus, refer to electronic authentic language databases that can be available via internet or as software installed in desktops (Hasselgrd, 2001). Language corpora can be either collections of written or spoken texts; for example, collections of wr

5、itten texts can be extract from newspapers, business letters, popular fictions, books, or magazines, published or unpublished school essays and etc. Collections of spoken texts can be any recorded formal or informal conversations, radio shows, weather broadcasts or even business meetings and etc. Wh

6、at Can Corpora Do?Language corpora can be used by anyone who is engaged in language learning, teaching, or research; language learners or even native speakers may find it useful to assist academic writing or lexical knowledge (Qiao, 1995); teachers can utilize the authentic collections of data as cl

7、assroom materials for ESL, EFL, or EAP (English for Academic Purpose) learners; language researchers or linguists often use corpora as language sources to analyse certain aspects of a certain language.Usually users of corpora use the searching tool, the concordance, to look for vast number of authen

8、tic language contexts analysed from corpora (Witton, 1993); this feature provides users not only better quality of examples but more exposures to an unfamiliar word. Examples of CorporaMost software based corpora need to be purchased; however, there are still lots of free online resources, available

9、 from internet, for teachers and learners.BNC (British National Corpus)The British National Corpus (BNC) is one of the most famous corpora consisting of 100 million collections of written and spoken language samples. Both online service and CD-Rom are available for users. For more information, pleas

10、e visit: VLC (Virtual Language Centre)The web-concordance is one of the language projects presented by the Virtual Language Centre in Hong Kong. Users can search for language samples from various corpora such like students academic writings, Time Magazines, the Bible, business and economy and etc. T

11、o experience the on-line concordance, please visit ICE (The International Corpus of English)The International Corpus of English consists of 100 million spoken and written English samples. It is a product presented by the Department of English and Literature in University College London. The ICE prov

12、ides both authentic written and spoken English samples of various English varieties such like Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, India and etc. For more information, please visit: For users who are looking for other language samples rather than English, there are also corpora in many other languages

13、 such like Italian, Polish, and Japanese and so on. For more information, please visit: (maintained by University Tbingen) or (maintained by Rice University). Pedagogical Benefits of CorporaProvides High Speed Searching ToolTraditional language learners rely heavily on dictionaries as the main sourc

14、e to look up word definitions and examples; however, this task is often too laborious and time-consuming (Cobb, 2003). By using the concordance tool of corpora to search for word contexts, learners are involved in a more speedy and efficient language learning experience.Provides Better Quality of La

15、nguage SamplesIt is suggested that language learning is more likely to happen when adequate examples are noticed and processed by learners (Cobb, 2003); for example, when learning a word, learners need to go through adequate sentence examples or contexts in order to develop more retainable lexical k

16、nowledge. Traditional dictionaries often provide unclear, limited, and artificial examples for each definition, which is insufficient for fully understanding an unfamiliar word. Using a concordance to search for word examples enable users to obtain mixed types of authentic language examples includin

17、g phrases and collocations (group of words that often appear together), rather than simple and clear sentences. Learners can not only develop their breadth but depth of lexical knowledge.Encourages Active and Student-Center LearningTraditional vocabulary learning is usually labeled as a passive way

18、of learning; no matter what approach the teacher uses in the classroom, intentional or incidental learning, the learning process that learners experience is usually inactive: receiving word lists or reading texts given by teachers, looking for word definitions, memorizing words, and luckily they rem

19、ember them or usually they face the depression that they forget the words and need to go through the same process endlessly. Teachers can do nothing but ask their students to do anything they can to memorize the word definitions.By designing activities that involved learners in exploring and noticin

20、g the target language, teachers can engage learners in a content decision making learning situation (Hadley, 2001). This technique is called Data-Driven Language Learning. It is suggested by Krishnamurthy (2004) that a word often has many meanings; however, the actual meaning should be determined by

21、 its surrounding contexts. By using the data-driven technique, teachers involve learners in tasks of exploring, choosing and determining the language from various resources that the computer found. The classroom therefore becomes student-center and learners have active control of their own learning

22、(Nation, 2001; Rschoff, B) Suggestions for Incorporating Corpora into Vocabulary ClassroomsCreate Concordance Sheets for Young Learners or BeginnersThe searching task from a corpus may be too overwhelming for beginners or young learners who do not know much about computers. Learners often become dem

23、otivated or frustrated because of the enormous data produced by the concordance (Hadley, 2001). However, teachers can still utilize a suitable corpus and create a concordance sheet for students so they do not need to encounter the enormous data by themselves.After distributing the concordance sheet,

24、 teachers can ask students to choose several examples that are meaningful to them and keep those examples in their language diaries. The purpose is to engage learners in exploring and noticing the language contexts; during the process of writing down those examples, learners are expected to undergo

25、a cognitive process of digesting the language input. In Hadleys study (2001), by using this teaching skill, he found his students not only developed their lexical knowledge but improved their writing skill.Classroom Project-10 Words a WeekTeachers can involve learners in a classroom project. They ca

26、n choose some interesting stories for students as homework; learners are asked to use markers to write down unknown words on vocabulary cards (20cmx8cm) during the process of reading. Teachers can prepare two boxes in the classroom: unknown word box and learned word box. Students can put their colou

27、rful word cards in the unknown word box anytime when they come to class and teachers can choose at least 10 words from the unknown word box as a classroom weekly project, in which students are asked to search for examples from corpora and share the search result with the whole class.As soon as stude

28、nts learn and retain the target words, teachers can put the word cards into the learned word box or paste it on the classroom wall. As time passes by, students will be motivated to learn more words since the learning has become a shared goal for the whole class.Task-based Learning-Filling GapsTeache

29、rs can design a gap filling task for students to do in pairs. By giving students a learning task, teachers can efficiently control and monitor students learning. Teachers can use the authentic contexts searched from corpora to compose a gap-filling sheet for students to work on; for example, if the

30、target word for the class is medicine, teachers may want to present several collocations such like use medicine, take medicine, and prescribed medicine. The gap-filling task may look like this: If you wear contact lenses, ask your health care provider if you should wear them while you are _ the eye

31、medicine. Also ask if the medicine you have been _ (prescribe) will stain your contact lenses. If your doctor _ a new antibiotic, take all of the medicine as prescribed. Many antihistamines cause drowsiness, so you may want to _ the medicine only at bedtime. (Search results of medicine from VLC onli

32、ne concordance: the health corpus: .hk/concordance/WWWConcappE.htm)By engaging students in searching for answers from a corpus to solve problems, teachers can encourage students to devote more time to the learning activity (Bracewell &Laferriere, 1996). Moreover, the task-based learning can also dev

33、elop learners confidence in their ability once they accomplish the task. ConclusionDue to insufficient learning time and inefficient word searching tools, lexical learning has always been one of the main language learning problems that learners pointed out. The advent of technology is about to prese

34、nt a different view toward language learning and teaching; several studies have shown positive learning outcomes by engaging students in activities of decision making and information retrieving. Integration of corpora into vocabulary classrooms not only provides learners faster searching tools and b

35、etter quality of contexts that traditional dictionaries are not likely to achieve but enhance their learning motivation. References Bracewell, R., Laferriere, T. (1996). The Contribution of New Technologies to Learning and Teaching in Elementary and Secondary Schools. (Documentary Review). Retrieved

36、 from Carter R. & McCarthy, M. (1988). Vocabulary and Language Teaching. Longman:New York. Coady, J. & Huckin, T. (eds.) (1997). Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. A Rationale for Pedagogy. Cambridge University:USA Cobb, T. (1999). Breadth and Depth of Lexical Acquisition with Hands-on Concorda

37、ncing. CALL Journal 12 (4), pp. 345-360 Cobb, T. (2003). Do Corpus-Based Electronic Dictionaries Replace Concordancers? In Morrison, B., Green, G. & Motteram, G. (Eds.) Directions in CALL: Experience, Experiments, Evaluation. Polytechnic University:Hong Kong. Hadley, G.(2001). Concordancing in Japan

38、ese TEFL: Unlocking the power of data-driven learning. Retrieved from Hasselgrd, H. (2001). Corpora and their use in research and teaching. Retrieved from http:/folk.uio.no/hhasselg/UV-corpus.htm Krishnamurthy, R. (2004). Learning and Teaching through Context-A Data-Driven Approach. Retrieved from:

39、Nation I.S.P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press:Cambridge Qiao, H. (1995). Navigating in corpus space with the Mini-Concordancer: an autonomous language learning perspective. On-CALL Vol. 9. No.3 Ruschoff, B. Data-Driven Learning (DDL): the idea. Retrieved from: Witton, N. (1993). A Simple Concordancer. From ON-CALL Vol. 8. No. 1 The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. X, No. 9, September 2004http:/iteslj.org/ http:/iteslj.org/Techniques/Chen-Corpora.html