Exploring corpora for ESP learning / Laura Gavioli.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gavioli, Laura.

Series:

Studies in corpus linguistics ; v. 21.

Studies in corpus linguistics, 1388-0373 ; v. 21

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers.

English language.

English language--Study and teaching--Data processing.

English language--Discourse analysis--Data processing.

Computational linguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (189 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : John Benjamins, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book investigates the effects of corpus work on the process of foreign language learning in ESP settings. It suggests that observing learners at work with corpus data can stimulate discussion and re-thinking of the pedagogical implications of both the theoretical and empirical aspects of corpus linguistics. The ideas presented here are developed from the Data-Driven Learning approach introduced by Tim Johns in the early nineties. The experience of watching students perform corpus analysis provides the basis for the two main observations in the book: a) corpus work provides students with a useful source of information about ESP language features, b) the process of "search-and-discovery" implied in the method of corpus analysis may facilitate language learning and promote autonomy in learning language use. The discussion is carried out on the basis of a series of corpus-based "explorations" by students and provides suggestions for developing new tasks and tools for language learners.

Contents:

Exploring Corpora for ESP Learning

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Key to abbreviations and acronyms

Introduction

1.1. Why this book?

1.2. Corpora and "models'' of language

1.3. Why ESP settings?

1.4. The corpora in this book

1.4.1. Small corpora and specialized corpora

1.4.2. Description of the corpora used here

1.5. A word about concordances and concordancing tools

1.6. Which learners?

1.7. How the book is organized

Notes

Corpus linguistics and language teaching and learning

2.1. Language corpora in language pedagogy: The 90s debate

2.1.1. Critical viewpoints

2.1.2. The contribution of corpus analysis to language pedagogy

2.2. Corpus analysis as a tool for language teachers

2.2.1. Corpus analysis and syllabus design

2.2.2. Supporting teachers' explanations

2.3. Corpus analysis as a tool for language learners

2.3.1. The Data-Driven Learning approach

2.3.2. Question 1: Should the teacher guide the learners?

2.3.3. Question 2: Learners or researchers?

2.3.4. Question 3: Is the result worth the effort?

2.4. Conclusion

Note

Theoretical premises for teachers and learners

3.0. Introduction

3.1. Learners looking at concordance data: What do they see?

3.2. Language as idiom vs. language as a logical system

3.3. The contribution of corpus work to a ``new'' idea of language compositionality

3.3.1. The open-choice principle and the idiom principle

3.3.2. The search for units of meaning

3.3.3. "Unusuality'' and creativity

3.4. Learners, "idioms'' and corpus work

3.5. Conclusion

Corpus work, ESP and language learners

4.0. Introduction: From small to specialized corpora

4.1. ESP and specialised corpora: A happy marriage.

4.1.1. ESP, quantitative data and corpus analysis: A natural development

4.1.2. ESP and corpus work

4.2. Specialised language and specialized teaching purposes

4.3. The continuum between specialized and general corpora

4.3.1. Register variation across genres

4.3.2. Identifying specificity

4.4. Specialized language corpora and language learning

4.5. Conclusion

Guiding the learners to work with corpora and corpus data

5.0. Introduction

5.1. Type of material: Samples vs. examples

5.1.1. Task 1: Looking at the concordance lines as samples

5.2. "What to look for'' in a concordance: Recurrence and typicality

5.2.1. Task 2: Focusing the students' attention on recurrent patterns

5.3. Correlating output data and corpus texts

5.3.1. Task 3: Corpus data and corpus content

5.3.2. Follow-up of Task 3: Leading students to create corpora

5.4. Conclusion

Learners exploring corpora to observe and produce texts

6.0. Introduction

6.1. Corpora and ESP learners: ``Spies''

6.2. Using a small corpus of specialized texts to discover technical concepts

6.2.1. A medical word: The case of the acronym ``RIBA''

6.2.2. A word from economics: The case of ``bid''

6.2.3. Conclusion

6.3. From a single corpus to more corpora: Comparing data

6.3.1. How specialized is a specialized word? The case of the word ``disorder''

6.3.2. Exploring corpora in different languages: Contrasting English and Italian data

6.4. Interacting with "the authorities'': Completing or contrasting explanations from reference materials and the teacher

6.4.1. The case of the progressive tense in medical research articles

6.5. Exploring corpora to produce texts

6.5.1. Translating a medical abstract

6.5.2. Writing out a political speech

6.6. Conclusion: From spies to "double-agents''?

Notes.

Concluding remarks

7.1. Three answers?

7.1.1. If learners are to behave as data analysts, what should be the role of the teacher?

7.1.2. Learners or researchers?

7.1.3. Is the effort a worthwhile one?

7.2. Corpus work and pedagogy: Old or new questions?

7.3. Future developments

7.3.1. Tools and teaching materials

7.3.2. Corpus-based dictionaries and learners

7.3.3. Corpus work and teaching/learning skills

7.3.4. Serendipity

7.3.5. Understanding ``deviance''

7.3.6. Recurrence, deviance and language awareness

7.4. A concluding wish

Appendix 1

Concordance of "worth'' in the MCB corpus (1,000,000 words), left sorted

Appendix 2

Concordance of "dealing/dealings''(noun forms selected manually), in the MCA corpus (1,000,000 words), left sorted, extended context - first 20 instances

Appendix 3

Task 2

Appendix 4

Task 3

Appendix 5

Concordance of "bid''in the MCA corpus (business section: 200,000 words), left sorted

References

Index

The series Studies in Corpus Linguistics.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612156229

9781282156227

1282156225

9789027293930

9027293937

OCLC:

191937597