ERIC Number: EJ1134040
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0958-8221
EISSN: N/A
Cultivating Effective Corpus Use by Language Learners
Kennedy, Claire; Miceli, Tiziana
Computer Assisted Language Learning, v30 n1-2 p91-114 2017
While there is widespread agreement on the expected benefits of hands-on access to corpora for language learners, reports abound of the difficulties involved in realising those benefits in practice. A particular focus of discussion is the challenge of transferring the skills of the corpus linguist to learners, so that they can explore this type of monolingual and unmediated resource effectively in a "learner-as-researcher" or "learner-as-detective" role. In this paper, we present a positive experience of an apprenticeship in corpus use, which we attribute to a training approach that seeks to exploit the unmediated nature of corpora rather than treating it as a problem for learners. Our approach is not aimed at equipping learners with skills that will allow them to derive rules from the systematic analysis of corpus data. Instead we aim to inculcate in our students a propensity for open-ended searches, and an observe-and-borrow-chunks mentality, oriented to copying models from a corpus to enrich and render more accurate their written production in particular. We also see this training process as encouraging their curiosity about language patterns and authentication of the use they make of such patterns, and therefore beneficial to their ongoing development as independent language learners more generally.
Descriptors: Computational Linguistics, Teaching Methods, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Apprenticeships, Language Patterns, Writing (Composition), Computer Assisted Instruction, Classification, Phrase Structure, Foreign Countries, College Students, Semi Structured Interviews
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A