Dr.Vander Viana (University of Stirling) · Discourse analysis Stylistics Learner-centered: students as “language detectives” (Johns,1997,p.101) Inductive approach. PPP III Presentation

Dr.Vander Viana

(University of Stirling)

@vanderviana

Corpus Linguistics (CL)

CL & grammar

Data-driven learning (DDL)

UK context

Computers• “as a way in to texts – or, to use corpus linguistic

terminology, a way of mining texts – which is

time-saving and, when used sensitively,

informative” (Archer, 2009, p. 4)

Provisional patterns

Probability

Form & function

Quantitative & qualitative approaches

Analytical comprehensiveness• “there is no prior selection of data which are

meant to be accounting for and data we have

decided to ignore as irrelevant to our theory”(Leech, 1992, p. 112)

Falsifiability

“Written language is grammatically more

complex than spoken language. It has

more subordinate clauses […]”

(http://www.uefap.com/writing/feature/complex.htm)

“If a friend or relative needs blood work,

is visiting a new doctor, or ends up in the

emergency room (ER), the caregiver will

begin to feel like a broken record

repeating the same information in each

new situation.” (COCA)

Relatively rare in English

Conversation

Fiction

Clause complexity vs. phrase complexity

(Biber et al., 1999, p. 93)

Academic prose

Newspaper

“the most frequent recurring lexical

sequences in a register”(Biber et al., 2004, p. 376)

“regardless of their idiomaticity, and

regardless of their structural status”(Biber et al., 1999, p. 989-990)

Cut-off points• Frequency

• Dispersion

Type 1: verb phrase fragments

• that’s one of the

• does that make sense

Type 2: dependent clause fragments

• I want you to

• when we get to

Type 3: noun/prepositional phrase fragments

• one of the things

• as far as the(Biber et al., 2004)

(Biber et al., 2004, p. 382)

Corpus Linguistics

Translation

Lexicography Sociolinguistics

Historical linguistics

Language teaching / learning

Discourse analysis

Stylistics

Learner-centered: students as “language

detectives” (Johns, 1997, p. 101)

Inductive approach

PPP III

Presentation

Practice

Production

Illustration

Interaction

(Intervention)

Induction

(Carter & McCarthy, 1995;

Flowerdew, 2009)

(Jones, Bastow, & Hird, 2001, p. 10)

The concordance lines below, taken from

the British National Corpus (BNC), are

real examples of sentences produced by

speakers of English as a first language.

Your first task is to read them and circle

the complements of the two-word verbs

in bold type. Then check your answers

with a peer and try to indicate the correct

word order for each set of concordance

lines.










lines.

Illustration










lines.

Interaction










lines.

Induction

Flipping through the pages of a notebook

She flipped through the encyclopedia and poin

she flipped through magazines, particularly t

who flipped through them quickly, and then,

flipping through the pages rather impatie

and flipped through his address book looking

s I flipped through the rest of the paper. No

verb + particle + complement

"I'll talk it all over with Alan when I

re they can talk over worries and experience

I talked the matter over with my ag

She was talking over the details with one

if I could talk them over with someone. I've

to face and talked over their problems. The

that he had talked over the idea with someone

verb + particle + complement

verb + complement + particle

“The questionnaires will be applied to

postgraduate students […] in the 2015-16

year.”

https://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/run.cgi/skell

“Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-

student and the students-of-the-teacher cease

to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-

student with students-teachers. The teacher is

no longer merely the one-who-teaches, but

one who is himself taught in dialogue with the

students, who in turn while being taught also

teach. They become jointly responsible for a

process in which all grow. In this process,

arguments based on “authority” are no longer

valid” (Freire, 1996 [1970], p. 61)











valid” (Freire, 1996 [1970], p. 61)

Active

participation











valid” (Freire, 1996 [1970], p. 61)

Empirical

data

Teachers’ Students’

Willing to accept the

limitations of their

knowledge?

Comfortable to hand

control over to

students?

Open to learn with

students?

Happy not to be told

answers?

Willing to be (pro-)

active learners?

Comfortable to teach

themselves, their

teachers and peers?

Description of classroom practice

Subjective evaluation

• “The teacher reported that the students enjoyed

the activity and that several students were using

the KWIC function to check their papers for

other classes.”(Reppen, 2010, p. 68)

Does DDL actually enhance students’

language learning?

(Viana, 2011)

“DDL is perhaps most appropriate in foreign

language contexts for undergraduates as

much as graduates, for intermediate levels as

much as advanced, for general as much as

specific/academic purposes, for local as

much as large corpora, for hands-on

concordancing as much as for paper-based

exploration, for learning as much as

reference, and particularly for vocabulary

and lexicogrammar.”

(Boulton & Cobb, 2017, p.39)

“From this we reach the somewhat

surprising and possibly encouraging

conclusion that DDL works pretty well in

almost any context where it has been

extensively tried.”

(Boulton & Cobb, 2017, p.39)

Master’s programs in ELT: A survey of UK

provision and student expectations &

experiences

Funded by the British Council (ELTRA)

University of Stirling team• 6 researchers

Document analysis

141 programs

CL as a standalone module• 35 programs (24.8%)

• 17 universities

15 England

2 Scotland

Place of delivery• UK: 33

• China: 2

Target students• Pre-/in-service teachers: 25

• In-service teachers: 10

Single CL module per program• Two module options: Birmingham & Lancaster

ELT Master’s programs with CL: 35

Different CL modules: 20

• Nearly all optional

• Two compulsory

“Corpus Analysis and Pedagogy”

MA Teaching EAP / Coventry

“Corpus Linguistics”

MA Applied Linguistics (online) / Birmingham

Pre-study questionnaire

• 502 respondents

“How important do you think each of these

modules is for an ELT Master’s course?”

• 1 = not at all important

• 6 = extremely important

15 module options

• CL (Mean = 4.581; SD = 1.1135)

Mean >5

• Methodology

• SLA

• Course/materials design

• Language analysis

• Teacher education

• Practice in teaching

• Research methods

Mean >4

• Assessment/testing

• Sociolinguistics

• TESP

• Ed technology

• Ed management

• TEYL

• CL

Mean > 3

• Translation

Mean >5

• Methodology

• SLA






Mean >4



• TESP

• Ed technology

• Ed management

• TEYL

• CL

Mean > 3

• Translation

Mean: 5.472

(SD=0.7499)

Mean >5

• Methodology

• SLA






Mean >4



• TESP

• Ed technology

• Ed management

• TEYL

• CL

Mean > 3

• Translation

Mean: 5.376

(SD=0.8990)

Mean >5

• Methodology

• SLA






Mean >4



• TESP

• Ed technology

• Ed management

• TEYL

• CL

Mean > 3

• Translation

Mean: 4.581

(SD=1.1135)

Mean >5

• Methodology

• SLA






Mean >4



• TESP

• Ed technology

• Ed management

• TEYL

• CL

Mean > 3

• Translation

Mean: 3.828

(SD=1.5743)

England• 2 primary schools (Mostly Year 5)

• 12 children

• 8-10 years old

Corpus : BNC

Materials• Paper-based materials

• WordSmith Tools

(Sealey, 2005)

Research methods• Recording of teaching sessions

• Interviews

Results• Developed curiosity about language matters

• Increased metalinguistic awareness

• Little difficulty in using the interface

• Ease in processing concordance lines

(Sealey, 2005)

Lagging

behind?

Inviting

further

exploration?

Corpus Linguistics

Translation

Lexicography

Cognitive linguistics

Sociolinguistics

Historical linguistics

Language teaching / learning

Discourse analysis

Stylistics

Systemic Functional Linguistics

“just as it is ridiculous to criticise a

telescope for not being a microscope, so

it is pointless to criticise corpora for not

allowing some methods of investigation.

They are invaluable for doing what they

do, and what they do not do must be done

in another way.”

(Hunston, 2002, p. 20)

[email protected]

@vanderviana

Archer, D. (2009). Does frequency really matter? In D.

Archer (Ed.), What’s in a word-list? Investigating word

frequency and keyword extraction (pp. 1–15). Farnham:

Ashgate.

Boulton, A. & Cobb, T. (2017). Corpus use in language

learning: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 67(2),

348–393.

Carter, R., & McCarthy, M. (1995). Grammar and the

spoken language.Applied Linguistics, 16(2), 141–158.

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan,

E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written

English. London: Longman.

Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at…:

Lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks.

Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 371–405.

Flowerdew, L. (2009). Applying corpus linguistics to

pedagogy: A critical evaluation. International Journal of

Corpus Linguistics, 14(3), 393–417.

Freire, P. (1996 [1970]). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M.

B. Ramos, Trans.). London: penguin.

Hunston, S. (2002). Corpora in applied linguistics.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Johns, T. (1997). Contexts: The background,

development and trialling of a concordance-based

CALL program. In A. Wichmann, S. Fligelstone, T.

McEnery, & G. Knowles (Eds.), Teaching and language

corpora (pp. 100–115). London: Longman.

Jones, C., Bastow, T., & Hird, J. (2001). American inside

out: Student’s book – advanced. Oxford: Macmillan.

Leech, G. (1992). Corpora and theories of linguistic

performance. In J. Svartvik (Ed.), Direction in corpus

linguistics: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 82,

Stockholm, August 4–8, 1991 (pp. 105–122). Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter.

Reppen, R. (2010). Using corpora in the language

classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sealey, A. (2005). An investigation into corpus-based

learning about language in the primary school

(R000223900): ESRC full research report. Swindon: ESRC.

Retrieved from https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/

esrc-files/outputs/1kxgr9sq00aLtD0x7V6wEA/TvMxZi3

v30i_-_Bw05Mn8A.pdf

Viana, V. (2011). The politics of corpus linguistics. In V.

Viana, S. Zyngier & G. Barnbrook (Eds.), Perspectives on

corpus linguistics (pp. 229–245). Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.

Documents

Dr.Vander Viana (University of Stirling) · Discourse analysis Stylistics Learner-centered: students as “language detectives” (Johns,1997,p.101) Inductive approach. PPP III Presentation