THE APPLICATION OF CORPUS DATA IN THE PREAPRATION OF GRAMMAR
BOOKS – OUTLINE
Major goals:
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to show that corpus research is necessary to provide an accurate description of language
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to evaluate a grammar book based on the author’s linguistic intuition and experience: its
weak points, solutions on how to complement it
Chapter 1
1. The study of grammar

understanding the structure of language

different perspectives/approaches:
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prescriptive
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descriptive
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theoretical (including Chomsky)
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empirical – corpus
2. How is grammar taught?

Harmer:
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exposure
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understanding the meaning
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understanding the form
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practice

Higgins
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various procedures – overlap with Harmer’s points
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“grammar teaching is not well understood at all”
3. The perspective of a learner

grammar necessary for communication

taught/learnt in the classroom – Kennedy: “responsible teaching involves
selecting what is worth giving attention to”
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selection – more information in grammar books
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certain aspects of language cause problems – teachers and learners resort to
grammar books
4. Grammar books

ideally – all the rules and multitude of examples
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variations, exceptions, vocabulary, collocations

necessary – additional information: doubts, questions – searching for answers,
solutions, guide
Chapter 2
1. Corpus linguistics

definition – general

annotation – part of speech tagging

application – language teaching
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improving teaching materials – providing better description of real life
language use
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language learnt and taught as a medium for communication

Chomsky: competence vs. performance
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competence: “explains and characterises a speaker’s knowledge of language”
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performance: “poor mirror of competence”

corpus – real life language use, performance
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necessary – as complementation, confirmation, source of examples
Chapter 3
1. That clauses

descriptions
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traditional – Swan, Martinet (general)
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corpus-based – my investigation: patterns of use, association patterns
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reported speech (details)

Swan and his grammar book
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description of that clauses
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reported speech

comparison
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Swan vs. corpus investigation
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Swan vs. Hewings
Conclusions