Using concordancers to teach English

Rose2006 · Post by **Rose2006** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:13 pm

Dear all,

This is the first time to post a question in this cafe. I would be very grateful if some of you could give some advice to me for my tough questions.

I am conducting a case study for a MA degree course on data-driven learning in respect of learning process and strategies. The concordancers I am using are either British National Corpus (BNO) or Concordancer of Virtual Language Centre (VLC). My students are of Form 4 (equivalent to Grade 10 on the whole) second language learners of English.

Do you have any teaching ideas about the use of concordancers to improve the English of students learning English as the second language?

I want to pass the skill of using concordancers to them and provide them with a variety of activities to practise the skill. Then I will know how they are using concordancers.

There will be four to five students chosen for the case study. Now I am planning to require the students to give a retrospective report to describe how they make use of the concordancers. To be specific, I am interested to know the learning process and strategies that learners follow when using concordancing tools as a learning aid. I will write journals of reflection of the whole process of my survey too. However, I do not know how I can make my survey valid?

Thanks for any supportive feedback!

Rose

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:39 pm

You may be in luck: I kicked off a thread that discusses (a paper that is discussing) concordancers vs dictionaries recently.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=2711

It's a work in progress - I'm going to add another post to it soon. I hope it is useful or at least interesting for your purposes.

I reckon I know of some papers and books that discuss data-driven learning, but I'll need to get back to you after I've checked my bibliographies, and I don't know at this point how much of what I could refer you to will be available freely online at this time; and in any case, if you have read several books on Corpus Linguistics generally, you'll probably already be familiar with everything that I am. But I'll keep you posted anyway!

Rose2006 · Post by **Rose2006** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:47 pm

Dear Fluffy

It's very kind of you. I will enjoy your discussion about dictionaries v.s. concordancers too.

Waiting for you.

Rose

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:07 pm

http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej31/m2.html

I'll post those DDL references soon. More on the other thread also, shortly.

Love,
FH xxx

Rose2006 · Post by **Rose2006** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:19 am

Dear Fluffy,

The website you sent to me is a very good one. There are a lot of examples and different kinds of concordances in it on first glance.

I was too busy working and I didn't check my Email for that. It's a very unexpected gift!

Thanks a lot again!

stephen · Post by **stephen** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:17 am

One possible use of concordences would be to use them as part of a tool to help develop a vocabulary notebook. I have all students in reading classes I teach keep a vocabulary notebook in which they record collocation maps/diagrams of new vocabulary they use. This is of course along with other techniques such as example sentences, mind maps, concept maps etc. Concordence programs could certainly be used to help develop these kind of notebooks although personally I use the reading texts we're working with along with the LTP collocation dictionary. Collocation programs could also be used to improve language usage in writing.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:54 pm

How about the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (instead), Stephen?

By that, I just mean, I'm interested in why you chose the LTP.

stephen · Post by **stephen** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:58 pm

I choose the LTP dictionary because when I persuaded my school to buy some, it was as far as I was aware the only one on the market. As it's the one I use it seemed the natural one to recommend.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:13 pm

Ah, I guessed it was something like that (availability/limited choice, at the time). If you were going to get your school to buy one now though, I guess you'd plump for the Oxford, right?

Not sure where the BBI would place, but I would perhaps choose the LTP over it. But Oxford is definitely my number one choice, of the three!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 7:27 pm

The most recent DDL references that I have are those in the second section ('Corpus linguistics and language teaching') of Barbara Seidlhofer's Controversies in Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press 2003).

The controversies brought about by the expansion of Corpus Linguistics - that is, its "good or bad" effects on syllabuses and materials, and teaching generally - are discussed in detail and at length by articles from writers such as Ronald Carter and Guy Cook, and the whole discussion is 'concluded in a particularly contrsuctive way by a paper by Gavioli and Aston (which) revisits some of the issues considered by Carter and Cook, examines Carter's examples with reference to actual corpus evidence, puts the issues into a wider perspective, and extends the discussion to the potential of corpora as tools in the hands of learners'.

Seidlhofer's suggestions for further reading are also very helpful. She refers the interested reader onto a book by Aston (Learning with Corpora), available from:
http://www.clueb.com/servlet/ParseHtml/ ... icerca.jsp

noting that Aston's 'introductory 39-page chapter...is the most informative and balanced way into the subject available anywhere'.

CLUEB also published Bernardini's Competence, Capacity, Corpora. A study in corpus-aided language learning, which Seidlhofer describes as 'providing a solid theoretical background to the use of corpora...as well as convincing arguments for trying out the corpora and computer tools she describes and examines.'

Apparently the Teaching and Language Corpora Conferences (TALC) have also produced several volumes which detail 'pedagogical corpus applications as well as offering many practical examples':
-Wichman, A et al (eds), 1997. Teaching and Language Corpora. (Longman)
-Burnard, L and McEnery, T (eds), 2000. Rethinking Language Pedagogy from a Corpus Perspective. (Peter Lang)
-Kettemann, B and Marko, G (eds), 2002. Teaching and Learning by Doing Corpus Analysis. (Rodopi)

There are obviously more references besides these, but the above seem to be the major ones. Generally, I would strongly recommend getting hold of Seidlhofer's book, and not only for the Gavioli and Aston paper.

I noticed that several references in Gavioli and Aston's paper were also referred to by Kennedy in his excellent 1998 book, An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics (Longman). The two references are:

Tribble, C and Jones, G. 1990. Concordances in the Classroom: A Resource Book for Teachers. (Longman)

and

Murison-Bowie, S. 1993. Micro-Concord Manual: An Introduction to the Practices and Principles of Concordancing in Language Teaching. (Oxford University Press)

Both 'contain clear and informative examples of exercises which make use of concordancing'.

I'm sorry that so little is available freely or widely on the net; and many of the above references could be out of print even if one did decide to order them!

Recent:
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_book ... d=SCL%2017
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_book ... d=SCL%2012
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_book ... L%26LT%206
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_book ... id=SCL%205
Generally: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seri ... series=SCL

Rose2006 · Post by **Rose2006** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:05 pm

Dear Fluffy,

I feel very grateful that you have contributed a lot of ideas to me. I have been really busy these days as I'm conducting the pilot study of my survey now but at the same time I have to give lessons as usual. I will digest your precious ideas for sure.

Thanks!

Rose

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Mar 02, 2005 6:25 pm

I was searching for the title of Tim Johns's 1986 publication (omitted by mistake from Kennedy's 1998 book's Bibliography):
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=slv1- ... ncordances

If you click on the second item down ('call') you will find several online works by Tom Cobb.

There are also various papers by other authors in Cobb's list, as well as in the first dozen or so pages of Yahoo hits.

Rose2006 · Post by **Rose2006** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 12:53 pm

Dear Fluffy,

Thanks for your last message! I have been living a very hectic life. I didn't check my mailbox. It's indeed very kind of you and you still remember me.

I want to try my best to improve my English but I'm too busy to enjoy the fun of reading. My Written English is just like a finished puzzle aseembled in different theoretical bits. It sucks!

Just sharing! I'm sad. Thank you for the manager of this website too for making it possible for people like me to ask for help.

Sincerely yours,

Rose

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