Learner corpora and English language teaching
Sylviane Granger (Louvain, Belgium)
The concept of using native corpora in foreign language teaching has, for some years now,
been gaining increasingly widespread acceptance. Indeed it is this concept which lies at the
heart of the biannual TALC conferences, of which this is the fourth. The concept of using
computer learner corpora (CLC) for teaching purposes is a much more recent one, however,
and one which the FLT community has not yet had time to fully assimilate.
In my talk I aim to take stock of CLC-based research, highlighting both the work that has
already been accomplished and the largely unexplored potential of the field.
In the first section I will define learner corpora and discuss their advantages over other types
of data used by SLA researchers and FLT specialists. In particular, I will stress the need to
adopt strict design criteria for data collection and describe the most useful methods of
analysis.
In the second section I will draw up an inventory of the FLT fields which stand to benefit
from CLC-based research, focusing mainly on the following three areas:
1) curriculum design: use of CLC for selecting and sequencing what needs to be taught
(Mark 1998, Meunier 2000)
2) materials design: use of CLC to improve FLT tools: ‘traditional’ grammars and
dictionaries (Longman Essential Activator); web-based materials and CALL programs
(Allan forthcoming; Milton 1998; Menzel et al 2000)
3) classroom methodology: use of CLC for data-driven learning (Granger & Tribble 1998)
and learning-based exercises (Seidlhofer forthcoming)
In my conclusion I will highlight the potential of micro learner corpora compiled by the
learners’ own teachers. Analysing this in-house material with text retrieval and error tagging
software (Dagneaux et al. 1998) will enable teachers to gain a much more fine grained
knowledge of their learners’ difficulties and adapt their teaching accordingly. In view of
teachers’ overall lack of experience in corpus research – itself due to the absence of corpus
modules in most teacher training programmes –, this work should result from close
collaboration between corpus linguists, FLT specialists and teachers.
Bibliography
Allan Q. G. (forthcoming) “The TELEC Secondary Learner Corpus: a resource for teacher
development.” In Granger S., Hung J. & Petch-Tyson S. (eds.) Computer Learner
Corpora, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching.
Dagneaux E., Denness S. & Granger S. (1998) “Computer-aided Error Analysis.” System. An
International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics 26(2): 163174.
Granger S. & Tribble C. (1998) “Learner corpus data in the foreign language classroom:
form-focused instruction and data-driven learning.” In Granger S. (ed.) Learner English
on Computer. Addison Wesley Longman, London & New York: 119-131.
Longman Essential Activator (1997) Addison Wesley Longman.
Mark K.L. (1998) “The Significance of Learner Corpus Data in Relation to the Problems of
Language Teaching.” Bulletin of General Education 312. Meiji University, 77-90.
Menzel W., Atwell E., Bonaventura P., Herron D., Howarth P., Morton R. & Souter C. (2000)
“The ISLE corpus of non-native spoken English.” Proceedings of the Second
International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, 31 May-2 June 2000,
Athens.
Meunier F. (2000) A Computer Corpus Linguistics approach to Interlanguage Grammar:
noun phrase complexity in advanced learner writing. Unpublished PhD thesis. Centre for
English Corpus Linguistics. Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.
Milton J. (1998) “WORDPILOT: enabling learners to navigate lexical universes.” In S.
Granger & J. Hung (eds.) Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computer
Learner Corpora, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching. 14-16
December 1998. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 97-98.
Seidlhofer B. (forthcoming) “Pedagogy and local learner corpora: working with learningdriven data.” In Granger S., Hung J. & Petch-Tyson S. (eds.) Computer Learner
Corpora, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching.