Corpora, context, and language teachers
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Alfredo Urzua
Abstract
The language teacher is an often neglected figure in learner corpora projects, including those whose aim is to apply corpus findings to second language pedagogy. Even though teacher mediation is critical to the potential success of corpus-informed instructional practices, the literature seldom addresses specific ways to get classroom teachers involved in the process of designing, collecting, and exploring learner corpus data. This chapter describes a learner corpus project in which the participation of local English language teachers was actively recruited throughout the project. The author describes ways in which teachers were involved in the project and illustrates the benefits of such a process with examples from a corpus-based study he conducted in the same local language teaching context. Keywords: Learner corpus; teacher involvement; contextualization
Abstract
The language teacher is an often neglected figure in learner corpora projects, including those whose aim is to apply corpus findings to second language pedagogy. Even though teacher mediation is critical to the potential success of corpus-informed instructional practices, the literature seldom addresses specific ways to get classroom teachers involved in the process of designing, collecting, and exploring learner corpus data. This chapter describes a learner corpus project in which the participation of local English language teachers was actively recruited throughout the project. The author describes ways in which teachers were involved in the project and illustrates the benefits of such a process with examples from a corpus-based study he conducted in the same local language teaching context. Keywords: Learner corpus; teacher involvement; contextualization
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of Contributors vii
- Foreword ix
-
Introduction
- Douglas Biber and the Flagstaff School of corpus-based research xv
- A corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation in teacher and student presentations in university settings 1
- Telephone interactions 25
- On the complexity of academic writing 49
- Telling by omission 79
- Corpora, context, and language teachers 99
- The challenge of constructing a reliable word list: An exploratory corpus-based analysis of lexical variability in introductory Psychology textbooks 123
- Corpus linguistics and New Englishes 147
- Investigating textual borrowing in academic discourse 177
- Situating lexical bundles in the formulaic language spectrum 197
- Index 217
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of Contributors vii
- Foreword ix
-
Introduction
- Douglas Biber and the Flagstaff School of corpus-based research xv
- A corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation in teacher and student presentations in university settings 1
- Telephone interactions 25
- On the complexity of academic writing 49
- Telling by omission 79
- Corpora, context, and language teachers 99
- The challenge of constructing a reliable word list: An exploratory corpus-based analysis of lexical variability in introductory Psychology textbooks 123
- Corpus linguistics and New Englishes 147
- Investigating textual borrowing in academic discourse 177
- Situating lexical bundles in the formulaic language spectrum 197
- Index 217
