Small Corpus Studies And Elt

Recent developments in this field of small corpus studies, largely brought about by the personal computer, have yielded remarkable insights into the nature and use of real language. This book presents work by a number of leading researchers in the field and covers a series of topics directly related to language teaching and language research. The ultimate aim of this book is to encourage the exploitation of small corpora by the ELT profession to make language learning more effective. In addition to descriptions of the basic corpus analysis tools, chapters in the collection cover syllabus and materials design, comparisons of different genres, descriptions of local and functional grammars, compilation and use of learner corpora, and making cross-linguistic comparisons. The message of this collection is that language use is purposeful and culture specific and that small corpus analysis is an effective method of linguistic investigation. Preface by: John Sinclair;

Recent developments in this field of small corpus studies, largely brought about by the personal computer, have yielded remarkable insights into the nature and use of real language. This book presents work by a number of leading researchers in the field and covers a series of topics directly related to language teaching and language research. The ultimate aim of this book is to encourage the exploitation of small corpora by the ELT profession to make language learning more effective. In addition to descriptions of the basic corpus analysis tools, chapters in the collection cover syllabus and materials design, comparisons of different genres, descriptions of local and functional grammars, compilation and use of learner corpora, and making cross-linguistic comparisons. The message of this collection is that language use is purposeful and culture specific and that small corpus analysis is an effective method of linguistic investigation."Preface by: " John Sinclair;

This title provides a practical guide to undertaking ELT-related corpus research. Aimed at researchers, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of ELT and TESOL, and English language teachers, the book: covers corpus research in the main areas of language study relevant to ELT: grammar, lexis, ESP, spoken grammar and discourse; presents a review of relevant corpus research in these areas, and discusses the implications of this research for ELT; suggests potential ELT-focused corpus research projects, and equips the reader with all the required tools and techniques to carry them out; and deals with the growing area of learner corpora and direct classroom application of corpus material.

Corpus Linguistics for ELT provides a practical guide to undertaking ELT-related corpus research. Aimed at researchers, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of ELT and TESOL, and English language teachers, this volume: covers corpus research in the main areas of language study relevant to ELT: grammar, lexis, ESP, spoken grammar and discourse; presents a review of relevant corpus research in these areas, and discusses the implications of this research for ELT; suggests potential ELT-focused corpus research projects, and equips the reader with all the required tools and techniques to carry them out; deals with the growing area of learner corpora and direct classroom application of corpus material. Corpus Linguistics for ELT empowers and inspires readers to carry out their own ELT corpus research, and will allow them in turn to make a significant contribution to corpus-informed ELT pedagogy.

In the last decade, the availability of corpora and the technological advancements of corpus tools have increased dramatically. Applied linguists have greater access to data from around the world and in a variety of languages through websites, blogs, and social networking sites, and there is a high level of interest among these scholars in applying corpora and corpus-based methods to other research areas, particularly sociolinguistics. This innovative guidebook presents a systematic, in-depth account of using corpora in sociolinguistics. It introduces and expands the application of corpora and corpus approaches and tools in sociolinguistic research, surveys the growing number of studies in corpus-based sociolinguistics, and provides instructions and options for designing and developing corpus-based studies. Readers will find practical information on such contemporary topics as workplace registers, megacorpora, and using the web as a corpus. Vignettes, case studies, discussion questions, and activities throughout further enhance students’ involvement with the material and provide opportunities for hands-on practice of the methods discussed. Corpus-Based Sociolinguistics is a comprehensive and accessible guide, a must-read for any student or scholar interested in exploring this popular and promising approach to sociolinguistic research.

This book explores the structure and use of academic and professional discourse through the lens of corpus linguistics. The goal of this book is to show how insights from corpus linguistic analyses can help us better understand how we use academic and professional language and help us find ways to better train newcomers to the genres used in various professional contexts. The contributions to this book show that specialized corpora of specific genres from a variety of fields allow us to make more relevant observations about the function and use of language for particular purposes. The specialized corpora examined include written and spoken academic genres, written and spoken business and legal genres, and written philanthropic genres. The book showcases a variety of approaches to analyzing the discourse of specialized corpora, and each chapter concludes with a reflection on the practical and pedagogical implications of the analysis.

Tato publikace je sborníkem 21 příspěvků, přednesených na 9. ročníku konference „Teaching and Learning Corpora“, která se uskutečnila na Masarykově univerzitě v létě 2010. Statě byly vybrány na základě dvou anonymních posudků, poskytnutých vědeckou radou konané konference. Kniha se zabývá rozmanitými způsoby využití jazykových korpusů při výuce a při studiu cizího jazyka, a je rozdělena do čtyř oddílů. Oddíly 1 a 2 pohlížejí na korpus jako vstupní zdroj, zkoumají nejdříve obecně jak mohou korpusy obohatit výuku jazyka, poté na konkrétních případech ukazují, jak převést poznatky do praxe, a nakonec hodnotí jednotlivé využití korpusů studenty. Oddíly 3 a 4 tematizují korpus jako výstup, což představuje především srovnání s korpusy rodilých mluvčích a následnou identifikaci „chyb“ či problémových oblastí, ale také ukazují, co studenti mohou vědět a skutečně ví v různých úrovních pokročilosti, a pokouší se zodpovědět na otázku, co nám tyto informace říkají o samotném procesu učení.

This volume provides an up-to-date survey of the field of corpus linguistics, a field whose methodology has revolutionized much of the empirical work done in most fields of linguistic study over the past decade. Corpus linguistics investigates human language by starting out from large collections of texts - spoken, written, or recorded. These language corpora, which are now regularly available in electronic form, are the basis for quantitative and qualitative research on almost any question of linguistic interest. Many techniques that are in use in corpus linguistics today are rooted in the tradition of the late 18th and 19th century, when linguistics began to make use of mathematical and empirical methods. Modern corpus linguistics has used and developed these methods in close connection with computer science and computational linguistics. The handbook sketches the history of corpus linguistics, shows its potential, discusses its problems, and describes various methods of collecting, annotating, and searching corpora as well as processing corpus data. It also reports case studies that illustrate the wide range of linguistic research questions addressed in corpus linguistics. The over 60 articles included in the handbook are divided into five sections: (1) the origins and history of corpus linguistics and surveys of its relationship to central fields of linguistics (2) corpus compilation (3) corpus types (4) preprocessing of corpora (5) the use and exploitation of corpora. The final section gives an overview of the results of corpus studies obtained in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, stylometry, dialectology, and discourse analysis. It also reports on recent advances made in human and machine translation, contrastive studies, computer-assisted language learning, and automatic summarization. The contributors to the volume are internationally known experts in their respective fields. The handbook is intended for a wide audience ranging from teachers, university students, and scholars to anyone interested in the use of computers in linguistic analyses and applications.

After decades of being overlooked, corpus evidence is becoming an important component of the teaching and learning of languages. Above all, the profession needs guidance in the practicalities of using corpora, interpreting the results and applying them to the problems and opportunities of the classroom. This book is intensely practical, written mainly by a new generation of language teachers who are acknowledged experts in central aspects of the discipline. It offers advice on what to do in the classroom, how to cope with teachers' queries about language, what corpora to use including learner corpora and spoken corpora and how to handle the variability of language; it reports on some current research and explains how the access software is constructed, including an opportunity for the practitioner to write small but useful programs; and it takes a look into the future of corpora in language teaching.

This volume provides an important contribution to the study of vocabulary and its relationship to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) research and teaching. Focussing on quantitative and qualitative approaches, this book draws on a wide range of literature to explores key issues that include: how to identify and categorise specialised vocabulary; and the role and value of word list research in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and ESP. This book features: An analysis of material in a range of different contexts that include secondary school education, pre-university and university-based education, professional and occupational ESP, and the trades. inclusion of many examples of specialised vocabulary from research in Aotearoa/New Zealand and from many other areas in the world. a review of the application of vocabulary research to professional and pedagogical practice suggestions for future directions for research. Written by a leading researcher, Vocabulary and English for Specific Purposes Research provides key reading for those working in this area.