Language teachers with corpora in mind: from starting steps to walking tall

Abstract

Although the use of corpus data in language learning is a steadily growing research area, direct access to corpora by teachers and learners and the use of the data in the classroom are developing slowly. This paper explores how teachers can integrate corpus approaches in their practice. After situating the topic in relation to current research and practice in ICT and language learning, we examine some easily available resources, suggesting how they can provide examples of naturally occurring discourse for use in the language classroom. Beginning with easily available online corpus resources with built-in concordancers which require no prior technical training, we continue by discussing the challenges which more advanced use of corpora presents. This is illustrated by examples from corpora of business communication and casual conversation. We conclude by emphasising that there is considerable scope for both research and dissemination in relation to corpus applications in language learning.