Category Archives: Technology

Using Corpora in English Language Teaching

Global thought, Scholarly Article, Technology

Hima Rawal

English language teachers throughout the world are always in search of a theory or method of language teaching that helps them resolve all the language teaching problems they face. However, there has never been such a method which can do so because of the varied nature of language teaching situations, unavailability of resources, issues about the relevance and applicability of a method in all contexts. Experts in the ELT field try to come up with some tools that can enhance language teaching to some extent. Corpus based language teaching is one of those convenient ways language teachers have been using because this presents an opportunity to teach authentic and contextualized language usage as a readymade tool. In this post, I present a brief introduction to some of the most prevalent corpora in the field of ELT.

Corpus is a collection of natural data from several different fields from which we can draw the materials for teaching, conducting research and so on. It is “a large, principled collection of naturally occurring texts (written or spoken) stored electronically” Reppen (2010, p. 2). Naturally occurring text means language from “actual language situations, such as friends chatting, meeting, letters, classroom assignments, and books, rather than from surveys, questionnaires, or just made-up language’ (p. 2). It includes both qualitative and quantitative data to draw from.

The most widely used corpus is COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). It is an online and searchable corpus consisting of 450+ million American English words and is arranged by different fields and registers. We can search the words from different disciplines, compare words, and find out collocations. The words can be searched in terms of time frame, frequency, relevance, alphabetic order and so on. It can be accessed through this link click and also click here.

Let’s look at some of the examples of how we could use COCA. Once we enter the site, we can see four options of display>>list>>chart>> KWIC (Key Work in Context), and>> compare.

If we choose the list option, type the word we are looking for (e.g. proficiency) and it will show us all the contexts in which the word has been found. The contexts will be exhibited from five different sections: spoken, magazine, fiction, newspaper, and academic language. Since the corpus will show thousands of examples of the word in all the contexts in which it appears, we can limit our search by selecting a specific time frame or a specific area, for example, how the word has been used in the academic field between 2005 and 2009. We can also find out the word with which it collocates the most by finding the words that mostly precede and/or follow it.

If we choose the option ‘compare’ and type two words that we want to compare (e.g. proficiency and achievement), the corpus will exhibit both the words appearing in different contexts from which we can draw a conclusion. Likewise, if we search a word (e. g. validity) through KWIC, we can see the contexts in which it appears (e.g. construct validity, discriminant validity, face validity, predictive validity, convergent validity, concurrent validity, diagnostic validity, consequential validity and so on). These combinations will appear in and/or across sentences.

Including corpus data in textbooks is relatively a new concept; however, we are familiar with the concept in the form of corpus-based ESL and EFL dictionaries like Cambridge Dictionary of American English, Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English, Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, etc. Examples of corpus based textbooks are Basic Vocabulary in Use by McCarthy and O’Dell (2010) and Touchstone by McCarthy, McCarten and Sandiford (2004). Basically, corpora provide ready resources for teachers. They are natural and authentic. They can be used for language learning, teaching and testing purposes. They can also be used for research purposes. Language textbook writers can use the data from corpora to include the teaching materials in the textbooks.

The word lists from the corpora can serve different functions: finding words in terms of frequency; finding content vs function words; finding related word forms (abandoned, abandonment); examining the role of prefixes and suffixes, finding the collocation of words (Reppen, 2010, p. 8) and so on. Some words can have different grammatical roles. The corpora provide us with information about those grammatical roles, the parts of speech and grammatical categories of the words as well. We can also find KWIC (key word in context) through which we get the information about the context in which a particular word is used.

One of the widely used applications of a corpus is to teach academic vocabulary to learners of English as a second or a foreign language. The learners in a particular field need to be familiar with the highly frequent academic words in their field. Teachers can use corpus such as Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL). It is a compilation of academic words consisting of 3.3 million words representing 570 word families from different genres. Within this corpus, we can search through different subcorpora since the collection is from different academic disciplines. By doing so, one can find out the most frequent academic words used in a particular genre and teach them to the learners to equip them to raise their level of comprehension and production in the respective genre. For example, one of the most frequent academic words found in the list is ‘analyse’ and this word appears along with all the related words such as “analysed, analyser, analysers, analyses, analyzing, analysis, analyst, analysts, analytic, analytical, analytically, analyzed.”

However, the problem with AWL is that it just provides the list of frequent words in an academic field and not the context in which they appear. Similarly, it is self-evident that learning a language also includes formulaic expressions to a great extent. On the basis of corpus research, Martinez and Schmitt (2012) have produced a PHRASal Expressions List (PHRASE List), which consists of 505 most frequently used phrasal expressions functioning as formulaic language. If teachers could select from and teach the expressions in the list, it can help English language learners comprehend naturally occurring conversations and texts.

Another very useful corpus site is Michigan Corpus Linguistics which links the users to different corpora and can be accessed through www.elicorpora.info. Two of the valuable corpus sites it links the users to are MICASE (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) and MICUSP (Michigan Corpus of Upper Level Student Papers). MICASE is a free and searchable corpus site which is very helpful for teaching and carrying out research on academic spoken language. MICUSP is a site where we can find papers from different disciplines. We can search the papers focusing on different genres, different types of writing (e.g. argumentative, creative writing, critique/evaluation, proposal, reports, research paper, response paper) or even different parts of writing (e.g. abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, conclusion, citation, etc). Along with these two sites, Michigan Corpus Linguistics also includes a corpus of conference presentations.

Similarly, Time Corpus (corpus.byu.edu/time/) is another useful site which is the online corpus of Time Magazine and helps us see how language changes over time. There are three other very useful and user-friendly corpus based concordancing programs: AntConc, MonoConc, and Wordsmith. These programs help us find word frequency lists, concordances, key words and so on. AntConc(www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html) and Wordsmith (www.lexically.net/wordsmith/) are free programs while MonoConc (www.athelstan.com/mono.html) is an affordable one.

The use from the websites in most of the corpora is free. The teachers can use them for: selecting and teaching academic words frequently found in authentic use in both written and spoken modes; using the contexts to help learners induce the real application of the English language. Corpora like MICUSP also enhance teacher professional development by providing teachers with the collection of conference presentation samples and valuable guidelines to develop different forms of writing. The data in the corpus can be utilized in devising research tools as well. Therefore, I suggest that English language teachers, textbook writers and researchers use some of these corpus sites, play with them and invest some time to see what small changes can be brought.

References

Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238.
Martinez, R. and Schmitt, N. (2012). A phrasal expressions list. Applied Linguistics, 33(3), 299-320.
Reppen, R. (2010). Using corpora in the language classroom. Cambridge: CUP.

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11Hima Rawal is currently a Fulbright Scholar doing her masters in TESOL at Michigan State University, Michigan, USA. She is a lecturer at the Department of English Education, Central Campus, T.U. She is a life member of NELTA and editor of the Journal of NELTA.

Exploring Creativity in Young Learners: An Analysis Within

Creativity, Miscellaneous, Technology

       *Sagun Shrestha

sagunshrestha4@gmail.com

‘Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.‘ Steve Jobs

Creativity is all about connecting and synthesizing. Maybe the process that takes place needs a little more of innovation. Put simply, it is a way challenging oneself by transforming and unleashing the forces and ideas within. When you do it, you think of going beyond the state of mediocrity. The pleasure comes within you and you feel your presence in pleasure. A ‘wow’ word resounds in your heart and memory.

Creativity in ELT

It is so awkward to see the practice of the same archaic methods being used in English Language Teaching in Nepal. A ‘chalk and talk method’ has been a common cliché to make criticism on present ELT situation in Nepal. The interception of modern technology is challenging our voyage to the academic world. What if we do not mingle technology with our teaching and learning and find a way-out to make them live and interesting? What if we do not change ourselves and our teaching practices to bring change in our academic world? We would be the losers? In this regard, Prof. Bhattarai speaks: ‘Doubt your beliefs and works, stop and question your practices, may be you were wrong so far, may be you can discover new unexplored areas which can open up new vistas in teaching.  Philosophies keep changing and so do teaching principles. You put a question: Is my method of teaching appropriate? Are we following appropriate curriculum, or do we need to stop and rethink over it?  All our socio-political values and norms have changed; they are changing so fast, so should not our system of education follow such changes endlessly?

This is in fact seeking and unleashing creativity within. Unless and until we become creative we cannot get, let alone imagine our students being creative. Again Prof. Bhattarai puts his words“:

‘What happens if a farmer does not know about the new breed of animals or seeds and manures and continues with old practice? He will spoil everything and ruin himself. So we traders of truth should also be aware of the new brands of education on sale in the world market.’

Novelty, a paradigm shift, learner or learning centered instruction, multiplicity in methodologies are all the features that we gain in creative instruction, and needless to say these are the postmodern trends in ELT. By postmodern I mean going beyond what we have now or the modernity has brought, and seeking innovation, creativity and criticality to find the unexplored world is the postmodern trend.

Are we supposed to be stuck with a unitary method or do we need to integrate different methods to yield better instruction? The question is of multiplicity here. Multiplicity in thought, multiplicity in interpretation and multiplicity in methods and techniques. We need to mingle all from Georgi Lozanov idea of suggestopedia to communicative language teaching in all dimensions. Focusing on a single method may mean inviting a failure to a large extent. Similarly, the incorporation of modern technology demands us to bring cyber world in language instruction. Can we ever think that our language instruction can be complete without using the multimedia in our classroom in this flat world? NO! A big No! In fact, I have been learning these days how some young teachers (not in terms of age but as regards ideas) are different from  the teachers with traditional mind-set. They handle their classrooms bringing technology via blogging, virtual classes, webinars and multimedia instruction. Since they comprise audio-visual instruction, the young learners find them gripping and this is how these teachers win the young hearts through their instruction.

A giant shift in our thought or methodology is a paradigm shift: a shift from our traditional way of instruction. In these days our job is not simply to teach the students but to make them largely creative by inspiring and leading them to explore their own world so as to be professionally sound in future.

Different publications like the leading dailies of Nepal inspire our young learners for their write-ups. Once a week, they have allocated the supplements entitled ‘Classroom’ in The Kathmandu Post, ‘The School Times’ in The Himalayan Times, and ‘Kid’s Corner’ in The Republica. It is to explore their written creativity via different publications. Similarly, for other skills, elocution, extempore, a webinar can be the options. Why don’t we practice them? Why have we teachers remained detached from this sphere? How many of us have helped the children to publish their write-ups or just inspired them to write? Probably many of us have been stuck with the fixed and rigid curriculum and killed the creative power of the children. Writing needs reading, and reading can enable the students to unleash something new but we assume we are unaware of it for long. This is high time we analyzed and knew this fact to have a giant shift in our instruction.

Learner or learning-centered instruction

For so long, we advocated for the learner-centered instruction treating learner as its focal point. I personally believe that it is faulty to focus merely on learners. We maintained the teacher as a facilitator, guide, mediator and any more terms added while opting for learner-centered but in the meantime, we did not deal ‘how’ and ‘why’ aspects to a large extent which is subtly dealing with learning-centered instruction. Learning-centered means focusing on process and product both. The process leads to the product; therefore, the process has to be taken on board. How can learning be bettered? Why has it to be bettered? These have to be considered.

The learner is just a shape that gets molded as per the content that is exposed to him. It’s all learning that has a big role in him to get molded. For this the teacher too has to think more seriously with a kind of novelty. Again here comes creativity.

Creativity in instructors

George Bernard Shaw comes with these words: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?” It’s sure the instructor should come the with ‘why-not?’ factor to explore much and bring newness. The ‘why’ factor makes us seek the things that they are in existence and it is simply knowing, and the ‘why-not’ factor makes us explore the things beyond knowing the things in existence. It means walking past knowing to the world of exploration.

In language teaching we can explore the new world and make our students explore much. More practically, it can be assisted with the different cyber means.

a. Online Virtual Classroom

Online virtual classrooms break away from the narrow confinement of formal classroom setting and invite both teacher and students for the discussion of the issues that is raised there. The discussion chain in the virtual classroom demands the learners to be more creative and critical which ultimately makes the learners and their writing adopt reformation.

There are so many online virtual classrooms, out of which to me the best ever I have used is www.nicenet.org. Once the account is opened, we receive a class key which is to be distributed to our students. With a help of class key they enter their class and take part in conferencing. This conferencing is basically used to get a discussion thread on any issue. The instructor posts a question and the learners comment or answer the particular question. They also comment on their friends’ answers along with their feedback which demands their critical voyage. The instructor is always with them, and he comments upon students’ answers if needed. This ultimately teaches students to have a feeling of respect as they are required to make some positive remarks on their friends’ writing in a discussion thread.

Conferencing, link sharing, having a class schedule and a list of students are the features of an online virtual class. It’s effective for all the levels from teen to adult learners.

b. Blogging

A blog is an electronic platform where we can post any document that can be reached out to anyone. It is more a free and mini-website with a fixed template. Depending upon the instructor’s need, you can create either a class blog, project blog, teacher’s blog or student’s blog which are for different purposes. To me, class blog and teacher’s blog are so much useful in the field of ELT as the class blog helps us to post our issues of the entire class and similarly, the teacher’s blog supports the teachers to provide notes, slides and hand-outs to his students.

Project blogs at times, can be useful to engage learners in developing projects on some sites . It will be more like getting discussion threads as done in Nicenet but for a different purpose. We can also appoint students themselves as editors and subeditors to post their friends’ issues and ask other non-editors to make their comments. www.eblogger.com, www.wordpress.com and www.weebly.com are the best blogging sites used so far.

c. Academic Project: A webquest

Academic project can be assigned online using some tools like www.zunal.com and www.questgarden.com which has its fixed format called webquests. They comprises introduction at the very beginning followed by tasks, process, and evaluation. Since webquest is a well-arranged set, it seems a perfect tool for assigning some project works to our  students. The rubric will help them get the right instruction that can be placed on evaluation obtaining from www.rubistar4teachers.com.

d. Academic Search Engines and Social Bookmarking
Search Engines, the generic are Google, Bing, etc. but the more academic that I use for language instruction is www.twurdy.com which shows the readability of each link. We can simply share the link checking the readability level. It is shown with the symbol of color, like the deep orange is a link having a complex text whereas faint orange is a link having a simple text. Moreover, it shows the age-level too.

The social bookmarking site helps us to have a record of each link. It can be termed as our online library since we have a tag to every site, and make a stack. Even other users can have access to our bookmarking if we have made it public. The private sites cannot be browsed by others besides the owner. The best social bookmarking site is www.delcious.com.

These all are the sites that I have been using in my classroom. At times I myself feel that the classroom setting has entirely been changed due to its intervention. Now the classroom’s formal setting has been distorted and everything needs redefining and regeneration, a feature of postmodernism. A Creative voyage indeed!

*Sagun Shrestha is an English Faculty at St. Lawrence College. He is currently working in capacity of Program Assistant in English Access Microscholarship Program, Nepal implemented by NELTA in support of American Embassy.

Technology Resources in English Language Learning

ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Technology

Gretel Patch

USA

 

Introduction

I’ve been kindly asked to contribute a few words for this month’s blog edition. I have had the privilege of meeting many of you, though not all, so let me briefly introduce myself. Online I am known as the EdTech Didi and I blog at www.edtechdidi.com. I have my Masters of Educational Technology and am a Technology Integration Specialist. I have a passion for using technology in creative and innovative ways, especially to support education and learning. I work hard to help parents, students, and teachers use the best resources for their learning adventures.

We recently lived in Kathmandu for two years and I was able to assist in what I call “technology outreach” with several of the English Access Microscholarship centers throughout Nepal. I tried to expose teachers and students to technology basics that could support them in their English studies, and I tried to instill a broad overview of what 21st Century learning is all about. In my limited time with the students, and also within limited classroom connectivity, only so much was possible. Still, I tried to lay a foundation to help them realize that technology is much more than texting, Facebook, and YouTube, and that there are many tools to help  them reach their educational goals.

Language Learning from Native Speakers

We currently reside in Washington, D.C., while my husband studies Kurdish, a language spoken in northern Iraq. In his profession he routinely receives language training before moving to a new country. Before we moved to Kathmandu, he studied Nepali for one year. The facility where he receives his training has 100,000 enrollees annually and offers courses in roughly 70 foreign languages

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. As you can imagine, this is no small undertaking. If you roamed the halls, you might overhear phrases in Urdu, Thai, Swahili, Croatian, Hungarian, Chinese, Arabic, French, or Armenian. While there are many language learning models and strategies, one requirement for this particular program is that only native speakers are allowed to be instructors.

With larger world languages, there are many qualified candidates to choose from. With small and regional languages, however, sometimes it is difficult to find qualified instructors. With specialized languages or dialects, sometimes there are limited resources to use as course materials and instructors must rely on current newspapers, for example, instead of established textbooks. Sometimes the teacher hasn’t lived in his/her native country for many years and the vocabulary and issues have changed. Nonetheless, this model places significant importance on learning a language from a native speaker.

In Nepal, it is not feasible to utilize a similar methodology, so what can be done to help ensure that students learn English with the proper dialect and vocabulary?

Technology Resources

Fortunately, there are many online resources and software that can help students be exposed to native English speakers. It is of critical importance that students are encouraged to use them and take advantage of such opportunity.

http://prezi.com/axirm4my1qbf/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

I created this Prezi with you in mind. It includes the problem, integration strategy, relative advantage, and the expected outcome for using each type of tool with the students. Various tools and resources are provided as links, such as:

Using the Internet for instruction, e.g. tutorials, eBooks, and videos

Tool software, e.g. word processing and presentations

Instructional software, e.g. vocabulary games and drill-and-practice activities

Productivity software, e.g. concept and word mapping to strengthen writing skills

Some other excellent resources are:

Voice of America: Includes lessons, videos, idioms, audio, and practice activities using current events.

Yale Center for Language Study: Links to various websites students can use to practice grammar, punctuation, spelling, slang, listening, speaking, writing, and reading.

Cultural Resources

There are a variety of other resources that can expose students to cultural awareness, values, and traditions as they explore the world “virtually” in a way they may not ever get to do otherwise. I am a Google Certified Teacher, which basically means I received some great training at Google’s offices and am an ambassador-of-sorts for the power of Google’s products in education. A few of my favorite resources are:

Google World Wonders Project: Virtually explore many of the great wonders of the world.

Google Art Project: Explore and experience many of the world’s great art museums

Here are two other virtual tours that help students “travel” to Washington, D.C., for example:

Interactive White House tour: Go inside the White House through photos and videos

National Museum of Natural History: Students may not be able to visit this Smithsonian, but you can download this interactive tour and learn as though they were there.

Conclusion

It is not possible to try everything, especially with limited computers, Internet access, and connectivity. However, with a little effort and determination, English language teachers can choose a few resources and technology tools that will greatly enhance student experiences and expose them to native English speakers. When used purposefully, technology can be very engaging and exciting for students. Teaching, especially teaching well, is not an easy task, but it is a crucial one if we are going to make a difference and ultimately change the world – one student at a time.

I wish you the best in all of your efforts with the wonderful students entrusted to your care. They truly are the future.

For more resources created with Access students and teachers in mind, please visit: http://www.edtechdidi.com/outreach.html