Resources for Using Corpus Linguistics in Language Education

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Resources for Using Corpus Linguistics in
Language Education

• Kenji Kitao
• Doshisha University
• Kyoto, Japan
• S. Kathleen Kitao
• Doshisha Womens College
• Kyoto, Japan

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• Resources for Corpus Linguistics
• http//www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/library/resou
  rce/corpus/corpus.htm
• These PowerPoint slides
• http//www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/Japanese/bio/
  present.htm24

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• I. Presentation
• A. Corpus linguistics and corpus-related
  resources
• B. Using corpus-related resources for language
  teaching
• C. Online resources for corpus linguistics
• 1. Types of resources
• 2. Examples of resources

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• II. Application
• A. Assigned tasks
• B. Free exploration

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Presentation

• Definitions
• Corpus (Latin for body)
• A text or collection of texts
• Now generally used to refer to machine-readable
  texts

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• Corpus linguistics
• the use of the empirical data from a corpus to
  study language usage and to find patterns of
  language usage by analyzing actual language use

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• Requirements
• A corpus
• Can be a single text or a large collection of
  texts
• Larger corpora provide more reliable results, if
  the purpose is making generalizations about
  language use

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• Balanced corpora
• A variety of genres, including academic writing,
  newspapers, fiction, and spoken language

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• Specialized corpora
• Examples
• Academic writing
• Text by learners of English
• Teachers can develop their own corpora
• Newspaper articles
• Learners texts

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• Corpus analysis tool(s)
• Types
• Tools with specific corpora
• Tools that can be used with any text or
  collection of texts
• General
• Word, Excel, etc.
• Specialized
• Count words
• Find example of specific words or parts of speech
• Analyze word frequencies
• Evaluate readability

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• Online Corpora
• Free to all users
• Available for a fee or for purchase
• Available only to restricted users
• In this presentation, we will only introduce
  resources that are free.

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• Using Corpus Linguistics for Language Teaching
• Technology has become widespread and accessible
• Larger, more powerful computers that can analyze
  large amounts of data quickly are available
• Many corpus-related resources have become
  available
• Language teachers and learners can use corpora

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• Two types of uses of corpus-related resources
• Low contact uses teacher uses resources to
  help in teaching, e.g., to find the difficult
  words in a reading passage
• High contact uses students use the corpora
  themselves to learn about language, e.g., to find
  out which adjectives collocate with rain

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• Data-driven learning is a high contact use of
  corpus-related resources.
• Using corpora to deduce rules of grammar or
  usage, e.g., to determine if a words connotation
  is positive or negative
• Advantages of data-driven learning
• Focus on authentic language
• Encouragement of students to deduce
• Real, exploratory activities rather than drills
• A learner-centered activity

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• Web sites with suggestions for data-driven
  learning activities
• How to use concordances in teaching English Some
  suggestions
• http//www.nsknet.or.jp/7Epeterr-s/concordancing/
  usingconcs.html
• Data-Driven Learning (DDL) the idea
• http//www.ecml.at/projects/voll/rationale_and_hel
  p/booklets/resources/menu_booklet_ddl.htm

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• Corpus-related Internet resources
• 1. General resources on corpus linguistics
• 2. Vocabulary frequency lists and frequency level
  checkers
• 3. Online corpora, concordancers and other
  text-analysis software
• 4. E-texts
• 5. Information about using corpus linguistics for
  language teaching

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• Resources for Corpus Linguistics
• http//www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/library/resou
  rce/corpus/corpus.htm

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• 1. General resources on corpus linguistics
• Web sites that help orient users to corpora and
  to what is available online for teachers to use
  in the classroom or in preparing material

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• The Compleat Lexical Tutor
• http//www.lextutor.ca/
• Resource for data-driven learning
• Tutorials, resources of teachers, resources for
  research
• Bookmarks for Corpus Linguists
• http//devoted.to/corpora/
• extensive annotated list of links related to
  corpus linguistics, including software, tools,
  and frequency lists papers and articles and
  English and non-English corpora

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• 2. Vocabulary frequency lists and frequency level
  checkers
• Frequency lists
• Words used most frequently in English and thus
  words that are most useful for students to know
• Often divided into sublists
• 3000 Most Commonly Used Words in the English
  Language
• http//www.paulnoll.com/China/Teach/English-3000-c
  ommon-words.html

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• Specialized word list
• Academic Word List
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/index.
  htm
• List includes 570 headwords with their word
  families
• Site includes an explanation of the word lists,
  the words in each sublist, suggestions for using
  the list, and a gapmaker that can be used to
  produce gap-filling exercises

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• Frequency-level checkers
• Produces a list of words at each level of
  difficulty
• Helps a teacher understand how difficult the
  vocabulary in the reading passage is and which
  words students at different levels of proficiency
  might need to learn
• JACET 8000 Word List
• http//www01.tcp-ip.or.jp/shin/j8web/j8web.cgi

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• 3. Online corpora, concordancers and other
  text-analysis software
• Concordancers
• A type of software for searching corpora
• Produces a list of key words in context (KWIC),
  that is, search terms with the words that come
  before and after them.
• May be able to search for parts of speech, e.g.,
  take, followed by a preposition
• May be able to search for two words that are not
  next to each other

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• Corpora (or parts of corpora) may have spoken
  language, written language, American English,
  British English, academic English, and so on.
• Specialized corpora include
• parallel corpora, which have same texts in
  different languages (to compare same passages in
  different languages)
• learner corpora, which have students writing/
  speaking (to help identify learners problems)

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• Examples of concordancers
• Turbo Lingo
• http//www.staff.amu.edu.pl/sipkadan/lingo.htm
• Can enter a text or URL and get a list of KWIC,
  average sentence length, word frequency list, and
  other analyses

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• VIEW (Variation in English Words and Phrases)
• http//view.byu.edu/
• Concordancing tool for the British National
  Corpus
• A powerful concordancing tool
• Has a useful tutorial
• Click on what you want to do to see samples of
  searches

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• Types of searches
• Search by exact word, exact phrase, wildcard, or
  part of speech
• For example, mysterious
• Use ? or as a wildcard
• For example, point
• Search for an exact word plus a part of speech
• For example, white n

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• Compare usage of semantically related words
• sheer/total n
• Search for surrounding words
• Nouns that follow the verb wrap
• Limit the search to one register
• Adjectives in tabloid newspapers

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• Compare usage between registers, e.g., news and
  speaking
• we verb that ACAD vs SPOKEN
• Find words with similar, more general, or more
  specific meanings
• Similar words to small
• More general than shriek
• More specific than woman

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• Online concordancer
• http//www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.htm
  l
• Can search a variety of corpora, including the
  Brown Corpus, the British National Corpus
  (written and spoken), a learner corpus, etc.
• Produces a KWIC list for a given word and a list
  of collocates and their frequency

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• WebCorp
• http//www.webcorp.org.uk/
• uses the Internet as a corpus and produces KWIC
  as well as providing other information

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• Online software to assess readability
• Tests of document readability and suggestions how
  to improve readability
• http//www.online-utility.org/english/readability_
  test_and_improve.jsp
• Can calculate texts of any length (some online
  text analysis programs have limits)

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• Can enter the text directly or enter a URL
• e.g., http//www.cis.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/Japan/s
  himoda/s1.htm
• Provides statistics
• Number of characters
• Number of words
• Number of sentences
• Number of syllables/word
• Number of words/sentence

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• Calculates readability indexes, including
• Gunning Fog Index
• Coleman-Liau Index
• Flesch Kinkaid Grade Level
• Flesch Reading Ease
• Lists sentences that might be rewritten to
  improve readability.

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• 4. E-texts
• In some cases, teachers or students may want to
  develop their own corpora. There are large
  numbers of e-text available.
• Project Gutenberg
• http//www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
• Large collection of downloadable fiction and
  non-fiction

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• Internet Public Library Online Texts
• http//www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/
  
• A large number of online texts on a wide variety
  of subjects
• Drews Script-o-Rama
• http//www.script-o-rama.com/oldindex.shtml
• A website with a large number of scripts of
  movies and TV programs
• American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank
• http//www.americanrhetoric.com/speechbank.htm
• A website with a large collection of speeches

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• 5. Information about using corpus linguistics for
  language teaching
• Corpus-related websites specifically for language
  teachers
• Learner corpora and SLA Research
• http//leo.meikai.ac.jp/7Etono/
• Links to learner corpora made up of language
  produced by speakers of various languages, links
  to useful tools, a bibliobraphy, and so on

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• Corpus linguistics What it is and how it can be
  applied to teaching
• http//iteslj.org/Articles/Krieger-Corpus.html
• An article about corpus linguistics and how it
  can be used in the language classroom

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Activities

• Use a corpus to check grammar
• http//www.lextutor.ca/grammar_tester/
• Use the concordancer in the bottom frame to check
  the grammar of the sample sentences in the top
  half

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• Use a concordancer to make a gap-filler or a quiz
• http//www.lextutor.ca/multi_conc/
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/awlgap
  maker.htm

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• Find examples of a word and group them according
  to meaning
• Examples (http//www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/con
  cord_e.html)
• party
• run

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• Use the results of a KWIC search to determine how
  synonyms are used differently
• Examples http//www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/conc
  ord_e.html
• travel, journey, trip, voyage, tour
• confident, fearless, pushy, upbeat, self-reliant

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• Use the academic word list web page and enter a
  text and make a gap-filling activity
• http//www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/awlgap
  maker.htm

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• Thank you