Scribd
Upload
2 views

Digital Corpora Presentation

The document discusses the use of digital corpora as authentic materials in teaching grammar, defining general and specialized corpora and their applications in language education. It highlights examples of both types of corpora, such as the British National Corpus and the NOW corpus, and explains how they can be utilized for teaching morphology and syntax. Additionally, it provides specific teaching activities that leverage corpus data to enhance grammar instruction.

Uploaded by

mchsidali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
2 views

Digital Corpora Presentation

The document discusses the use of digital corpora as authentic materials in teaching grammar, defining general and specialized corpora and their applications in language education. It highlights examples of both types of corpora, such as the British National Corpus and the NOW corpus, and explains how they can be utilized for teaching morphology and syntax. Additionally, it provides specific teaching activities that leverage corpus data to enhance grammar instruction.

Uploaded by

mchsidali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 20

DIGITAL CORPORA AS A

SOURCE OF AUTHENTIC
MATERIALS IN TEACHING
GRAMMAR
By Dr. Alexandra Smirnova,
Assistant lecturer at the University of Blida 2
DEFINITION AND TYPES
A digital, or electronic, corpus is a collection of texts (or
transcripts of speech) compiled according to specific
criteria and stored in the digital form to be analysed
using a computer.

 general corpora
 specialized corpora
GENERAL CORPORA
Their aim is to represent the language as broadly as possible;
therefore, they can be used in teaching English for general
purposes.

 Representative (different speech genres, e.g. academic, spoken,


fiction, magazine, etc.)
 Balanced (all speech genres are represented equally)

 Random (the choice of specific texts is random)


TYPES OF GENERAL
CORPORA
 The BNC (the British National Corpus, 100 million words)

https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/
 The COCA (the Contemporary Corpus of American English,
1.0 billion words)
https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/
 Strathy Corpus (Canadian English, 50 million words)

https://www.english-corpora.org/can/
SPECIALIZED CORPORA
Specialized corpora are restricted to a particular topic, speech
genre or type of discouse; therefore, they can be useful in
teaching English for specific purposes.

 Frequency of specific grammatical constructions in the


relevant types of discourse.
 Incorporating useful domain-specific vocabulary while teaching
grammar.
EXAMPLES OF SPECIALIZED
CORPORA
1. The NOW corpus (News on the Web, 17 billion words)

https://www.english-corpora.org/now/
2. Corpus of US Supreme Court opinions (Legal opinions, American, 130
million words)

https://www.english-corpora.org/scotus/

3. The SOAP corpus (100 million words of data from 22.000 transcripts from
American soap operas from the early 2000s)

https://www.english-corpora.org/soap/
DIGITAL CORPORA IN
TEACHING GRAMMAR
The use of authentic corpus-derived examples in a language teaching
classroom goes back to the 1980s (McKay, 1980).

 Morphology

 Syntax
THE USE OF CORPORA IN
MORPHOLOGY
We can search for words that contain the same morpheme. For example, to
compile a list of verbs starting with the prefix dis-:
1. In the search box, type in dis* (* stands for ‘anything that follows dis-’).
2. Click on POS (parts of speech) on the right of the search box and set it to
_pos by clicking again on POS that appears on the right in small capitals.
3. In the search box, type in _v, which stands for the verb (Figure 1).

4. Click on ‘Find matching strings.’


THE LIST OF VERBS
STARING WITH DIS-
CONCORDANCES FOR THE
VERB DISAPPEARED
By clicking on the verb, we get a list of concordances. A concordance can be
expanded to a paragraph of about ten lines by clicking on the number on the left.
TEACHING ACTIVITY
Task: Circle all verbs with the prefix dis- in the following sentences. Justify
your answer.

1. We have some beaches where all of the sand has disappeared.

2. It will discourage people from participating in future family research


projects.
3. I'm sorry, I don't discuss fees over the telephone.

4. This is a film you should discover.


THE USE OF CORPORA IN
SYNTAX
In syntax, corpora offer much greater possibilities than in morphology due
to the fact that all words are annotated for parts of speech and even for
specific word forms and semantic features.
PoS tags are available in the dropdown list on the right of the search box
and can be used in two different ways:

 Limiting the word to a specific part of speech


 Adding the POS as a separate word
LIMITING THE WORD TO A
SPECIFIC POS
Imagine that you need to find sentences with the word ‘guard’ as a noun.

1. 3.

2.
ADDING THE POS AS A
SEPARATE WORD
Another possibility is to look for a phrase with an open slot tagged for a
specific part of speech.
THE LIST OF PHRASES FOR
SERIES + V3SG
EXAMPLES OF COMPLEX
SEARCH PATTERNS
The query for the complex transitive pattern. LEFT THE DOOR OPEN
FIND THE DEFENDENT
GUILTY
WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN
KEEP THE SOIL MOIST
MAKE THE PROCESS
EASIER

TAKE THE TIME


NECESSARY*
EXAMPLES OF COMPLEX
SEARCH PATTERNS
Verbs in the corpora are tagged for specific forms (base form, third person
singular, verb forms with -ed, -en and -ing) and for their types (modal,
lexical, auxiliary). This allows us to search for different tenses.
THE CONTINUOUS GROUP
OF TENSES
TEACHING ACTIVITY
Task: Open the brackets putting verbs in the Present Continuous, Past
Continuos or Present Perfect Continuous.

1. I do not care about your excuses. I __________ (wait) for you for hours.

2. Then she realized that everyone __________ (look) at her. Everyone in


the whole store.
3. Take a listen. She __________ (talking) about Medicare for all!

4. Palestinian conflict __________ (go) on for decades.

5. I actually thought you __________ (try) to avoid me.

You might also like