Introduction to Corpus Linguistics and ELT

BELT: Brazilian English Language Teaching Journal , 2012

This paper discusses the impact language and learner corpora have had in English Language Teaching (ELT). Corpus Linguistics can be defined as the study of language through compilation of authentically produced texts which undergo automatic or semi-automatic analyses. Over the past decade Corpus Linguistics studies have been increasingly adopted in ELT, ranging from applications in teaching materials (O'Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter, 2007) to understanding how learners and non-native speakers use English (Granger, 2003, 1998). Language and learner corpora, both spoken and written, have shed light into how the English language is actually used around the world, and are consequently changing the way we teach English. In this paper we will show how such corpora are influencing ELT, in general, and more specifically in Brazil, as this is our research and teaching context.

TESOL Quarterly, 2019

The present paper has a theoretical and a practical aim: firts of all, it discusses the place of corpus techniques used for language exploration and learning in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and English Language Teaching (ELT) theories; secondly, the practical aim consists of a demonstration of how corpus-driven techniques pinpoint the fundamental role of idiomaticity in language use and how this should be focused upon in the language classroom if language teaching aims to promote learners' effective command of the target language and competent communicative ability.

Aleph: Langues, Médias & Sociétés, 2022

The relevance of corpus linguistics in language teaching and learning has witnessed challenging views in academia. This paper discusses the feasibility of its implementation as an educational, pedagogic, and academic requirement in language education. The claim made here is that corpus linguistics is not merely a globalisation trend, but it may prove an indispensable tool encompassing countless applications for learners, teachers, and resarchers alike even in less technology-based educational contexts.

2006

Abstract: Despite the progress that has been made in the field of corpus linguistics and language teaching, the practice of ELT has so far been largely unaffected by the advances of corpus research, and corpora and concordances are hardly used in the German EFL classroom. This article aims to take stock of developments in this area and formulates tasks for the future of pedagogical corpus applications.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

This project is the result of an effort to introduce corpus linguistics tools and techniques to pre-service teachers. All chapters in this Open Educational Resource (OER), with the exception of the tutorials, were written by undergraduate students in TESOL and Linguistics, who had no previous knowledge of corpus linguistics before working on this project. Our hope is that with this OER, we can inspire other in-and pre-service teachers who are new to corpus linguistics to develop their own pedagogical materials using corpora. But, let's start from the beginning: What's corpus linguistics? Corpus linguistics is a research methodology that involves the analysis of large collections of language data, or corpora, in order to identify patterns and regularities in language use. Since the late 80s and early 90s, linguists have suggested that corpus tools have the potential to revolutionize language teaching (see Johns, 1986; Rundell & Stock, 1992; Johns, 1991; among others). These researchers point out a number of advantages to using corpus in the classroom, including: • Authenticity: Corpora allows students to explore natural language data.

International Journal of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, 2020

Over the past few decades, corpora have not only revolutionized linguistic research but have also had an impact on second language learning and teaching. In the field of applied linguistics, more and more researchers and practitioners treasure what corpus linguistics has to offer to language pedagogy. Still, corpora and corpus tools have yet to be widely implemented in pedagogical contexts. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of pedagogical corpus applications and to review recent publications in the area of corpus linguistics and language teaching. It covers indirect corpus applications, such as in syllabus or materials design, as well as direct applications of corpora in the second language classroom. The article aims to illustrate how both general and specialized language corpora can be used in these applications and discusses directions for future research in applied corpus linguistics.

2013

This paper aims at contextualizing and presenting the first volume of the journal Research in Corpus Linguistics and is, therefore, divided into two main parts. First of all, it provides an introduction to the field of corpus linguistics and its increasingly relevant role in language teaching and learning. Secondly, it briefly introduces and discusses the six articles of the volume. Stemming from oral presentations delivered at the 4th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (CILC2012, Jaén, Spain), these articles have a number of features in common. They all make extensive use of corpora and at the same time deal with language teaching and language learning, the underlying assumption being that a genuine and mutually beneficial connection can be established between teaching and research. For this reason, each of them constitutes an illustrative sample of how different corpora can be exploited for different research purposes.