Corpus Research Applications in Second Language Teaching: A Look into Corpus-informed Materials Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Norwati Roslim ◽  
Muhammad Hakimi Tew Abdullah ◽  
Anealka Aziz ◽  
Vahid Nimehchisalem ◽  
Azhani Almuddin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Materials Development ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Reference Grammar ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Clear Guideline

Numerous corpus studies have suggested that teaching materials design could greatly benefit from the empirical information about language use provided by corpus linguistics. In spite of the awareness that corpus-based research can offer valuable insights for materials development, still relatively small number of studies report on the practical applications of corpus data for teaching materials development. There is no clear guideline or framework on how corpora and corpus studies could assist in developing teaching materials. Hence, this study focusses on one grammatical item which poses problems to Malaysian learners, that is, prepositions. The objectives are (i) to identify prepositions in the British National Corpus as a reference corpus and the descriptions offered by linguists and grammarians as a reference grammar, and (ii) to provide a framework to use reference corpus, reference grammar and corpus-based research, as a resource for developing materials in the teaching of prepositions. In order to meet the objectives, content analysis was used as the methodology throughout this study. The findings showed that reference corpus, reference grammar and corpus-based research could be used systematically as guidance to develop corpus-informed materials. It is hoped that this contribution of knowledge could have an impact on second language learning-teaching.

Constructing a Second Language

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 111-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick C. Ellis ◽  
Teresa Cadierno
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Functional Interpretation ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Cognitive Principles ◽  
Conceptual Transfer ◽  
Language Meaning

This Special Section brings together researchers who adopt a constructional approach to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as informed by Cognitive and Corpus Linguistics, approaches which fall under the general umbrella of Usage-based Linguistics. The articles present psycholinguistic and corpus linguistic evidence for L2 constructions and for the inseparability of lexis and grammar. They consider the psycholinguistics of language learning following general cognitive principles of category learning, with schematic constructions emerging from usage. They analyze how learning is driven by the frequency and frequency distribution of exemplars within construction, the salience of their form, the significance of their functional interpretation, the match of their meaning to the construction prototype, and the reliability of their mappings. They explore conceptual transfer and the acquisition of second language meaning. They consider the implications of these phenomena for L2 instruction.

scholarly journals Discourse Competence Development in English as Second Language Learners: Effect of Poems on Proficiency and Performance

sjesr ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 268-274
Author(s):  
Dr. Shaukat Ali ◽  
Mr. Saddam Hussain ◽  
Mr. Iftekhar Ali
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Treatment Group ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Discourse Competence

This study investigates the effect of poems as language teaching materials on the discourse competence of English as a second language learners (ESL) learners. Discourse competence is one of the sub-skills of English speaking skills which has further been divided into two sub-skills called 1) organizing a coherent conversation and 2) then maintaining it. It was a quasi-experimental study consisting of a control group (CG) and an experimental group (EG) from the faculty of social sciences, University of Malakand, Pakistan. They were the students of the third semester and were taught English as a minor course. Before the commencement of the experiment, the students of both groups were subjected to a speaking type pre-test. Immediately after the pre-test, the control group was taught through traditional teaching materials whereas; the treatment group was treated with poems as teaching materials. Moreover, observation field notes were employed to find out the reasons behind the performance of the students of both groups. After a six-week experiment, a post-test similar in nature to the pre-test was dispensed among the groups. The scores of the respondents of both groups were compared by using independent samples t-tests. The outcomes indicated that the learners in the treatment group scored significantly higher on the post-test than the learners in the comparison group. The observation field notes further displayed that the students of the treatment group were actively involved in the language learning process. Moreover, they associated the text of poetry with their, socio-cultural, and personal lives. Additionally, they enjoyed greater autonomy due to ambiguity and universality in the texts of the poems. The study suggests that poems should be utilized as teaching materials in ESL classrooms.

Practice and progression in Second Language Research methods

AILA Review ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 80-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Mackey
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Research Synthesis ◽  
Deep Dive ◽  
Psychology Education ◽  
Language Research ◽  
General Linguistics

Since its inception, the field of second language research has utilized methods from a number of areas, including general linguistics, psychology, education, sociology, anthropology and, recently, neuroscience and corpus linguistics. As the questions and objectives expand, researchers are increasingly pushing methodological boundaries to gain a clearer picture of second language learning. At one end for example, we see measures of cognition (e.g., brain imaging and eye tracking) and at the other end we see exploration of issues of culture and identity (e.g., ethnographies, deep dive case studies, introspective and narrative analyses). There is an emerging emphasis on research synthesis, meta-analysis, and replication. This article illustrates a few of the advancements in methods and research agendas in SLA. I will conclude by highlighting some of the ways that second language researchers can continue to incorporate, assimilate, and shape methodology, as well as pointing out some of the potential pitfalls, and overall, how these methodological innovations benefit the field.

Language Teachers as Materials Developers

RELC Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003368822110616
Author(s):  
Jiao Li ◽  
Xuesong (Andy) Gao ◽  
Xuehai Cui
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Materials Development ◽  
Materials Analysis ◽  
Learning And Teaching

This report reviews studies on language teachers as materials developers in language education, particularly focusing on how language teachers act as materials users, materials analysts, and materials designers when engaging with language learning and teaching materials. We contend that the three dimensions of materials development – that is, materials use, materials analysis, and materials design – intersect with one another, and that language teachers play a critical role in all three. Therefore, this review concludes with a research agenda that centres on language teachers as materials developers to expand our understanding of their roles in materials development.

scholarly journals The active dictionary of lexical combinatorics as a means of optimizing language learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-60
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Trub ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Word Combination ◽  
Translation Equivalent ◽  
Russian Noun ◽  
Lexical Function

An important element of language competence is the knowledge of different features of lexical combinatorics. This article describes the structure of an Active Russian-Ukrainian Combinatory Dictionary of Nouns. The main goal of the Dictionary lies within the systematic representation of lexical combinatorics of a particular entry keyword along with its translation equivalent. A keyword is a Russian noun which designates such situations as an action, activity, process, pro-perty, state, or an event. Each lexeme which denotes a situation usually relates to a number of other lexemes that denote correlation between the participants of a situation, its variable signs, typical impacts, e.g., beginning or terminating a particular situation, its creation or ending, and other impacts constrained by its specifics. It is essential that different names of situations relate to different sets of lexemes attached to them. A combination of words with the name of a situa-tion and a lexeme that this name relates to is called collocation. In corpus linguistics, colloca-tions are described by means of apparatus of lexical functions (LF). Thus, the accompanying lexeme of the word combination conveys the meaning of LF for which the name of situation serves as an argument. In the Dictionary, eасh entry involves not only a Russian noun naming situation and its Ukrainian translation but also a set of collocations that correlate with the noun. Each Russian collocation is accompanied by its Ukrainian equivalent. The use of such a dic-tionary furthers the knowledge of the user’s native (first) language (Russian or Ukrainian). The Dictionary is especially important for learners of Ukrainian as a second language. It contains information about “paradigmatic syntagmatics” in Ukrainian yet not fully represented in bilin-gual dictionaries. Keywords: dictionary, noun, combinatorics, collocation, lexical function, predicate, actant.

Idiom variation in Italian and English

1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Cignoni ◽  
Stephen Coffey ◽  
Rosamund Moon
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Italian Study ◽  
Search Techniques ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
Specific Variation

This article reports on two parallel but independent studies of idiom variation in corpora — one of Italian and one of English. In the Italian study, 324 idiomatic expressions were looked for in a corpus of 16 million words, while the English study investigated more than 2,800 idioms in an 18-million word corpus. A description is given of the search techniques employed to locate instances of variation. We present our findings by first describing the variation types common to both languages and thereafter examining cases where variation seemed to be wholly or predominantly language specific. Many similarities were found to exist between the two languages, and language specific variation could often be related to more general language specific features. We also comment on the overall frequency of idiom variation, which was found to be very similar in the two studies. In our concluding remarks we suggest that contrastive idiom analysis of the sort carried out, could and should be undertaken between other language pairs, and that the resulting interlingual descriptions would be of use in practical applications such as second language learning and computational tasks.

scholarly journals Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony McEnery ◽  
Vaclav Brezina ◽  
Dana Gablasova ◽  
Jayanti Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Learner Corpora ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Learner Language ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this article we explore the relationship between learner corpus and second language acquisition research. We begin by considering the origins of learner corpus research, noting its roots in smaller scale studies of learner language. This development of learner corpus studies is considered in the broader context of the development of corpus linguistics. We then consider the aspirations that learner corpus researchers have had to engage with second language acquisition research and explore why, to date, the interaction between the two fields has been minimal. By exploring some of the corpus building practices of learner corpus research, and the theoretical goals of second language acquisition studies, we identify reasons for this lack of interaction and make proposals for how this situation could be fruitfully addressed.

scholarly journals Applying constructional approach to second language teaching and learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 127 ◽  
pp. 01016
Author(s):  
Svetlana Viktorovna Ivanova ◽  
Svetlana Nikolaevna Medvedeva
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Second Language Teaching ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

The inevitability of addressing constructional approach in modern linguodidactics is caused by the crisis in teaching practices aimed at providing students with a set of static information. The ever- and fast-changing nature of the modern system of knowledge leads to the necessity of teaching students how to search for, analyze and critically assess actual language data. The paper discusses problems and prospects of applying constructional approach in second language teaching and learning and posits an algorithm of studying construction semantics of the ‘noun + get + adjective’ construction as an example. The research methods include analysis and synthesis for identifying problems and prospects of introducing constructional approach in second language learning. A set of resultative meanings of the ‘noun + get + adjective’ construction is obtained by way of semantic clusterisation. As a result, major advantages and challenges of applying constructional approach to second language teaching and learning are established. The paper emphasizes the need for students to have a sufficient theoretical basis in language typology and corpus linguistics. The current research also offers an algorithm of construction analysis and includes a listing of key resultative meanings of the ‘noun + get + adjective’ construction and its restrictions. The results can be of certain interest for corpus linguistics and construction semantics. Prospects for the future research in this field reside in developing strategies aimed at introducing construction grammar in the learning process and cataloguing constructions within different types of languages as well as identifying dependencies between constructional patterns and types of languages.

scholarly journals Application of Learner Corpora to Second Language Learning and Teaching: An Overview

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Xu
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Learner Corpora

<p>The paper gives an overview of learner corpora and their application to second language learning and teaching. It is proposed that there are four core components in learner corpus research, namely, corpus linguistics expertise, a good background in linguistic theory, knowledge of SLA theory, and a good understanding of foreign language teaching issues (Granger, 2009). Based on the above components, the present paper first introduces learner corpora, then reviews literature concerning the application of corpus linguistics to SLA by means of contrastive interlanguage analysis, and at last discusses the relationship between learner corpora and foreign language teaching.</p>

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