Application of Corpus Linguistics in Teaching English Language
Introduction
Corpus linguistics refers to the study of languages as expressed in corpora or samples of text as used in the real-world (Campoy-Cubillo et al., 2010 p.2). A corpus is a collection of texts, which are either written or spoken in a way that is machine-readable, that may be annotated with various forms of linguistic information (Campoy-Cubillo et al., 2010 p.2). Corpus linguists suggest that languages can be analysed more reliably by examining samples during their analysis in the field; that is, analysing samples that have not been interfered with experimentally (Campoy-Cubillo et al., 2010 p.2). With increased use of computer technology, corpora, which are thought to be superior to dictionaries regarding helping one understand the contemporary use of a language, are mainly computer-based (Hoffman et al., 2008 p.11). As such, the use of the application in teaching the English language in class can be part of the much-advocated application of computer technology in teaching. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of how corpus linguistics can assist in developing pedagogical approaches in the teaching of English language and the application of corpus linguistics in the English class. The paper pays particular focus to the teaching of English in English-Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).
Corpora and Technology
Before the invention of computer technology, one had to collect numerous amounts of printed material in a language to do corpus linguistics (Cook, 2003 p.71). Therefore, it was laborious to read through the various texts whenever one was searching for the use of a particular word or phrase. The invention of computers not only allowed for storage of even larger amounts of text that can be used for analysis, but also for a greater ease of analysing the recorded data since computers can do automatic searches for the word or phrase of interest (Hoffman et al., 2008 p.14). Moreover, computers are consistent and reliable, hence, eliminating the mistakes that can jeopardise a corpus study conducted without the aid of a computer (Biber et al., 1998 p.25).
Kennedy (2014 p.14) classifies corpora into two main groups: general corpora and specialised corpora. General corpora originate from texts that are not for specific linguistic analysis and derived from multiple genres. Specialized corpora are those designed for specific research purposes and are mainly based on words from a particular genre of literature. Each corpus has its format and includes word lists, concordances, and statistics. The use of corpora can either be direct or indirect (Kennedy, 2014 p.16). Direct use is mainly by the application of word searches through the whole collection of available data. In the current English teaching and learning, direct use of corpora is limited due to curriculum requirements, time constraints, and lack of the various skills required by learners and teachers to use corpora directly.
Impact of Corpus Linguistics on Language Pedagogy
Krieger (2003 pp.1) identifies three main areas of Corpora’s application in teaching: syllabus design, classroom activities, and material development. This section of the paper discusses the applications of corpora in detail.
Since corpora help in the critical evaluation of languages, they have assisted in the critical evaluation of English syllabi in a bid to make them better. According to Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.368), corpus linguistics can also be used to improve the English curriculum, making it more functional. Xian and McEnery (2011 p.370) argue that most English textbooks meant for ESOL teach English in a way and context that makes it difficult for the ESOL to communicate effectively with native English speakers. Moreover, available frequency data in corpora can help to determine what to teach. As such, corpora can play a role in determining what the syllabus is supposed to cover. Commonly used words or phrases contemporarily deserve to be included on a syllabus. A curriculum that includes the things that learners are likely to meet outside school is far more functional and helpful to the students in the long-term. With the application of corpora, one can do what Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.371) refer to as priority teaching, which entails not only choosing the most functionally important areas to teach, but also determining the order in which they are taught to start with the most important. Hunston (2002 p.117) presents the same argument in another way – she argues that use of corpora should lead to different views of the syllabus.
Additionally, the use of corpora can help to appreciate the importance of collocations in teaching English in ESOL. Lessons on collocations help ESOL to speak the English language while employing a high number of fixed phrases, which can be interpreted easily by the listeners, making their communication with other people more efficient. Knowledge and proper understanding of collocations help learners in sentence construction. Furthermore, as Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.373) assert, collocational errors are language errors mostly committed by ESOL; inclusion of these mistakes in syllabi can help eliminate these errors, hence, improving learning significantly. Effectively learning a second language requires one to have a lot of exposure to language data – one of the areas that this exposure will help in the proper use of collocations (McEnery and Hardie, 2011 p.33). Corpus research can assist in the development of a syllabus that provides shared and realistic examples that are easily understood and utilised by ESOL.
Apart from the changes in the curriculum, corpus linguistics and its application in English classes have led to the development of different teaching methods (Campoy-Cubillo et al., 2010 p.52). Of these, student-centered learning has been the most prominent. It makes absolute sense that considering the bulkiness of the corpora used for corpus linguistic research, the teacher should only act as a guide and allow the learners to do most of the research on their own. This way, the teaching process is much easier for the teacher and is far more efficient as the learners gain the most from each session. As earlier alluded to, use of computer technology will make the whole process much easier and much more enjoyable for the learners. Allowing every learner to do their corpus research on a particular word or phrase and later share their findings with the class, allows for more uses of the word or phrase in question. As such, the learners can learn much more in a shorter time (McEnery and Hardie, 2011 p.46). Moreover, this classroom process allows the teacher to do individualised teaching – the teacher has the time to attend to the individual needs of each learner as the students are conducting the research.
Secondly, corpus linguistics is useful in the development of learning materials. The development of pedagogical approaches through corpus linguistics requires the development of teaching materials that make it possible to teach the changed syllabus, for instance. As Krieger (2003 pp.2) puts it, the development of learning materials is often dependent of the developer’s intuition of what to teach the learners. By use of corpus linguistics, a scholar who develops teaching materials, especially books and other texts, can identify the most commonly used words or phrases and the various styles requiring these content, and thus, endeavour to include them in the development of learning material. Moreover, corpus linguistics allows the content developer to develop exercises using real-world examples, making the models more useful for the students. Conversely, the intuitions of an author might not be right; in such a case, a corpus linguistic research can help the author to identify the right pattern of usage of a particular lexical item and, thus, develop accurate and current learning materials (Krieger, 2003).
One group of learning materials whose development and design have been influenced greatly by the corpus research in the past that are entirely dependent on corpus research at present times are reference materials like dictionaries. Hunston (2002 p.96) asserts that as a result of corpus research, most people who do not even know of corpus linguistics are utilising materials based on corpus research. Over the years, lexicographers have identified the advantages of using corpora in their work. One main advantage is that machine-readable corpora allow the lexicographer to extract a wide variety of authentic examples on an item from a large collection of text in a short time. Secondly, corpora can quantify collocation and usually give frequency information. Indeed, corpora are influential in the development of frequency dictionaries, which are of great importance in teaching English to ESOL since they allow the learners to identify the most commonly used words and phrases and their correct uses. Moreover, most current corpora have annotations and corpus markup that allow lexicographers to give accurate descriptions of the utilisation of a lexical item based on the available textual and sociolinguistic meta data (McEnery and Hardie, 2011 p.61). The availability of monitor corpora has also helped lexicographers to track the usage of certain lexical items over the years, thus, enabling them to publish reference materials that are up-to-date and communicate effectively in the current world despite the fact that they are not the native users of English language.
Besides, Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.379) note that grammar not based on corpus research frequently has biases and is, thus, not accurate. The authors go further to examine the uniqueness and the advantages of corpus-based grammar. First, corpus-based grammar appreciates and explores variations between spoken and written grammar. Secondly, with the use of corpora, pattern grammars that focus on the relationship between patterns and meanings are derived. Pattern grammars are unarguably important in the process of teaching and learning languages as they provide a rich resource for vocabulary building. Arguably, patter grammars do not treat words in isolation but rather as part of the phrases with which the words were written with or spoken with (Hunston, 2002 p.106).
Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.382) claim that by 1995, most of the major publishers of learners’ dictionaries including Longman, Oxford, and Cambridge all argued that the latest editions of their learners’ dictionaries were based on corpus linguistics in one way or the other. One important feature of these dictionaries which make them appropriate for ESOL is the fact that they look to limit the use of vocabulary when defining various words since ESOL may not have very well developed English vocabulary since English is their second language. Moreover, these dictionaries usually give frequency data (Campoy-Cubillo et al., 2010 p.70). This aspect alone makes these dictionaries to serve just as corpora. With such a dictionary, learners can determine the frequency with which certain words or phrases are used and employ them correctly without even knowing that they are doing corpus linguistics. Moreover, unlike what was the tradition, corpus linguistics has led to the innovation of the usage of authentic examples while highlighting the uses of a particular word or phrase in learner dictionaries; this is unlike olden dictionaries where lexicographers used their examples, which lacked authenticity and a real-world touch to them. They had the belief that learners of English as a second language will have difficulties in understanding authentic examples. In reality, it was the opposite; students struggled to synthesise examples that had been born in a lexicographers mind based on the lexicographer’s environment and situations. Understanding authentic examples have proven to be easier since they originate from various regions, and languages and, thus, based on the use of a lexical item by indigenous and exotic English speakers.
Apart from their use in the development of reference materials, corpora themselves help as research materials. Farr (2008 p.40) reports that majority of trainee teachers who had undergone a short training in corpus linguistics preferred to use corpora in conducting research on an open topic and using the methodology of their own choice. Considering the amount of information that one corpus can contain, it is a crucial research material in language. Based on this, it is important to encourage the use of corpora in teaching English since they can be utilised by learners as research materials. Cobos (2011 p.33) emphasises on this when she says the primary goal of introducing corpora in the English classroom is to enable students to use them for research purposes.
Another aspect of pedagogy where corpus linguistics has been extensively used and should continue to help is in teacher training (Campoy-Cubillo et al., 2010 p.87. It is evident that to enable learners to benefit maximally from corpus linguistic research; it is important to train their teachers in this area. By including corpus linguistics in teacher training, teachers are equipped with the capability of language research and with proper language awareness. Such teachers can take full advantage of corpus linguistics in their teaching – this will entail using corpus linguistics in many other areas of classroom teaching apart from concordancing and lexico-grammatical analyses.
According to Farr (2008 p.39), most teachers in training think that the use of corpora in teaching the English language is highly beneficial. Moreover, the trainee teachers tended to enjoy lessons that use corpora. The trainee teachers reported that corpus linguistics tended to invoke their inner spirits of research and inquiry. Indeed, it is beneficial for the learners and the system to have teachers who have been primed and are willing to conduct further research to enrich English as a teaching subject; such teachers would do well in enhancing language awareness. Moreover, it would even be better for the learners and the system if the use of corpus linguistics in teaching English can invoke their willingness to conduct research.
Fourth, corpus linguistics and its principles can assist in classroom activities in the process of teaching (McEnery and Hardie, 2011 p.69). There are many direct applications of corpora in the English class. First, corpora can enable learners to compare the use of language in various texts and situations. As earlier alluded to, corpora offer the advantage of differentiating between spoken and written English and also help learners differentiate the use of language in various situations. In addition, corpora are used in the classroom to analyse language as is used in course books and readers (Krieger, 2003 pp.1). This function is particularly important for idiomatic expressions and other types of figurative language that can be employed by different writers to differentiate things implicitly. Only a corpus offers the learner the chance of looking at the many various uses of an idiomatic expression and analysing it in a short time. As earlier alluded to, applying corpus linguistics in an English classroom allows the learners to access a wide variety of authentic and real-time examples; these cannot be compared to the teacher’s examples and is, thus, highly advisable. Moreover, an English teacher can use corpus linguistics to generate exercises and other activities to be undertaken by students as will be discussed later (Krieger, 2003 pp.1). Further, corpora have been used in the English class to examine word order. The order in which words to use is not something which is inherently natural for ESOL and explanation by the teacher may make little or no sense – exposure to a large volume of authentic examples from the real-world is the best solution in this case. Finally, corpora can be used to compare similar words in the English classroom. For ESOL, this is an important application of corpora as it will help the learners to know the particular context in which it will be right to use one of a group of similar words.
Cobos (2011 p.33) asserts that the use of corpora in the classroom is highly efficient since it is easy for the learners and the teacher. In her study, even though the participants had no prior experience in corpus linguistics, they understood instructions and analysed lexical items without difficulty. Moreover, the learners seemed to examine concordances and collocations quite quickly. Moreover, the study revealed that it could be possible to use corpora in the English classroom without having to employ computers (Cobos, 2011 p.33). Over the years, one of the main challenges facing the adoption of corpus linguistics in teaching English has been the inadequacy of computers. This study revealed that the problem is easy to solve without lowering the effectiveness of teaching English. In fact, the application of corpora without having to use computers seemed to be an advantage in this case – since the learners did not get enough exposure to computers due to their limited availability, printing out the concordances and collocations allowed the students to access them in a familiar form. Moreover, printing tended to limit the amount of information available – for learners without exposure to corpus linguistics, access to corpora online could present them with overwhelming quantities of data.
Nesselhauf (2003 p.231) describes the difficulties that learners, especially ESOL go through when they encounter collocations. The author asserts that the use of corpora in teaching English in the classroom can help ESOL to master the use of collocations. The author also appreciates the fact that most learners have difficulties in combining sets of words – a problem that is thought to be more common in the ESOL. The results of the study imply that the utilisation of corpora in teaching English is something that requires emphasis since it can help learners, especially ESOL, to overcome their difficulties with collocations and combining words or phrases.
Wu (2010 p.73) adds that the use of corpora tends to inform the intuition o f non-native teachers – by using corpora, the non-native teacher can quickly identify the areas of language that are most important for their group of learners. The author also adds that the combination of grammar teaching with the teaching of vocabulary will enable students to master a language in an even better way. Moreover, instead of the traditional instruction, which emphasised on the structural accuracy of sentences, the use of corpora in the classroom will stress on alternative grammatical constructions of the sentences with a retained meaning.
Fifth, corpora have been utilised in testing for English language (Xiao and McEnery, 2011 p.376). In this area, corpora are useful in testing construction, selection of questions, and test compilation. In the selection of questions, the examiner will look to select the questions that examine the most common uses of a particular lexical item. In ideal setups, tests mainly focus on the things that the examinees are likely to encounter more frequently in that area while in the real-world; as such, there is no better way to ensure this in English apart from the use of corpora. Additionally, corpora can assist in the capture of responses and scoring of the tests. Regarding response capture, examiners will examine the responses given by learners alongside the examples that are provided by corpora since students are diverse and they might give answers not familiar to the reviewer. In that case, as a way of giving the benefit of the doubt to the learner, the examiner can look for the way in which a student has used a lexical item in an exam situation to determine if the usage is correct or not. This approach is much more important in the assessment of English speaking where diversity in the use of lexical items is likely to be witnessed.
Corpora can also make the process of compiling an examination and selecting exam questions much easier for the teacher (Xiao and McEnery, 2011 p.377). An example of this is the generation of computer-based tests – the examiner only has to instruct the computer, which, in turn, determines the questions automatically (Hoffman et al., 2008 p.31). Despite there being doubts about the effectiveness of such tests, they have proved to be comparable to written tests. In the past, frequency data in corpora have been used to create sentence-based exercises which can be administered by the teacher in the course of the lesson to determine the level of comprehension among the learners. Corpora have also helped in the process of validation and standardisation of tests composed by other means. Here, a corpus research is used to determine if the proposed test is manageable for learners of a particular level and to find out if the proposed tests are a repetition of previous exams. More importantly, corpora are critical in developing word lists that are unique to a particular domain, for example, business; this is relevant in developing topical tests.
Moreover, corpora can also be used to develop and to teach a language that is peculiar to a particular subject area. Regarding teaching English, with the help of corpora, it is much easier for teachers to teach vocabulary of various areas like business and medicine (Cobos, 2011, p.33). The teachers have the chance to also explain the correct usage of these items of vocabulary at the same time. Currently, the development of corpora in other languages other than English has made the process even easier for the teachers. Cobos (2011 p.33) emphasises the importance of cognates and their utilisation in teaching English to people who speak it as a second language; cognates ensure that the English vocabulary is not strange for the learners and, thus, makes it easier for the teacher. Having corpora in the students’ first languages makes the process even easier for them to identify cognates and use these to understand English better.
Finally, apart from its applications in teaching English, the direct teaching of corpus linguistics is necessary and should, thus, be included in the syllabus of instruction for English. Though not a common practice, it is critical that education planners for the English language consider teaching the use of corpora as a subject or as part of the English syllabus. Notably, learners who are proficient in the use of corpora will be individuals who are both primed to pursue research and equipped with knowledge that can help them conduct research efficiently. Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.381) indicate that teachers should know how to teach about corpora, how to exploit corpora and be able to use corpora in their teaching. Regarding pedagogy, Xiao and McEnery (2011 p.379) also suggest that the traditional approach of presentation, practice, and production may not be effective; rather, an efficient method would be a model that requires the teacher to illustrate, interact, and induct.
Conclusion
In the recent past, the use of technology in teaching English has become popular. This popularity presents a good chance for teachers and curriculum developers to include corpus linguistics in the English curriculum from an early stage. As seen in the paper, there are many advantages of teaching corpus linguistics and using them as a teaching method. It is also especially important to use corpora when teaching ESOL since it enables them to acquire a command of the English language just as native English speakers. Even though the inadequacy of computer technology and internet connection has curtailed the use of corpus linguistics, the problem can be overcome easily – some aspects of corpus linguistics can be taught effectively without computers. Teaching about corpora, using corpora in the English lesson, and encouraging learners to use corpus-based reference materials is highly recommended, especially when dealing with ESOL learners.
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