CALL – A Corpus-based Course
in Contrastive Analysis
and Learner Language.
Signe Oksefjell Ebeling and Hilde Hasselgård
(University of Oslo)
New Trends in Corpus Linguistics
Granada 22-24 September 2008
1. Background
 Corpora and language teaching at the University of Oslo
 Flexible learning environment (e-learning)
 CA & LL and the Integrated Contrastive Model (CA & CIA)
2. Development and structure of the course
 Main features
 Other components (incl. integrated corpora)
3. Teaching
 Practical matters
 Teaching schedule
 Student feedback
 Exam
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Corpora and language teaching at
the University of Oslo
 The English department at the University of Oslo has made
extensive use of corpora over the past decades
 Developed the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC) / Oslo
Multilingual Corpus (corpora of original texts and translations)
 Contributed to the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLENICLE)
 A natural development that corpora are integrated more and more
into both on-campus and online teaching at the University of Oslo.
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The CALL project
 Flexible Learning Environment (Funded by the ”Fleksibel læring”
Initiative, University of Oslo)
 Combined with on-campus teaching
 Developed for students of English linguistics (2nd/3rd year of study)
with main focus on:
 Corpus-based approach
 Contrastive analysis (English-Norwegian) (ENPC)
 Learner language studies (Norwegian advanced learners of English) (ICLE/NICLE)
 Combination of CA & LL
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Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis
cf. Aijmer & Altenberg (1996), Johansson (2007)
 Give new insight into the languages compared – insights that are likely
to go unnoticed in studies of monolingual corpora
 Can be used for a range of comparative purposes and increase our
knowledge of language-specific, typological and cultural differences,
as well as of universal features
 Illuminate differences between source texts and translations, and
between native and non-native texts
 Can be used for a number of practical applications, e.g. lexicography,
language teaching and translation
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Corpus-based Learner Language Studies
(Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis)
cf. Leech (1998), Granger (1998)
 What linguistic features in the TL do learners use significantly more often or
less often than native speakers do?
 How far is the TL behaviour of the learners influenced by their NL?
 In which areas do they tend to use ”avoidance strategies”, failing to exploit the
full range of the TL’s expressive possibilities?
 In which areas do they appear to achieve native-like or non-native-like
linguistic performance?
 What (in order of frequency) are the chief areas of non-native-like linguistic
performance which learners in a country suffer from and need particular help
with?
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Contrastive analysis and learner language
"Not all combinations of linguistic approaches are felicitous. But
when they are, they can bring out fascinating facts that have
hitherto been unnoticed. Two approaches that go particularly well
together are Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Contrastive
Interlanguage Analysis (CIA)" Gilquin: 2000/2001:95.
CA
OL vs. OL
CIA
SL vs. TL
NL vs. IL
IL vs. IL
OL: original language (texts)
NL: native language
SL: Source language (original texts)
IL: interlanguage (learners' language)
TL: Target language (translated texts)
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The Integrated Contrastive Model
Predictive approach
Predict potential difficulties for
learners
Diagnostic approach
LL features may be traced back to the
mother tongue
LL features may reflect general
strategies of learning or they may
have other causes.
Cf. Granger (1996), Gilquin (2000/2001)
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Main features
Short introduction to topic
Main points of required reading/lecture
Exercices
Corpora readily available
Other components
Interviews
Quizzes
Terminology checklists
Example: Week 5
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Teaching contrastive analysis
and learner language
Practical matters
Campus teaching (not e-learning) but with frequent reference to
the CALL platform.
Two hours a week for 14 weeks – seminar with some student
activity.
19 students completed the course.
The classroom had a computer with a beamer for the teacher, but
no student computers.
Two obligatory written assignments – one in contrastive analysis
and the other in the analysis of learner language.
A written take-home exam which included a corpus analysis –
either contrastive or learner language.
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Teaching schedule spring 2008
First half (7 weeks)
Second half (7 weeks)
– Introduction to Contrastive analysis
(CA)
– Introduction to learner language
(LL)
– Corpora and contrastive analysis
– Corpora and learner language
– Lexical CA
– Lexical errors
– Grammatical CA
– Characteristics of learner language
– Macrolinguistic CA
– Problems and prospects
Bringing CA and LL together
Making connections (e.g. overuse, underuse)
Using the “integrated contrastive” approach
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Student reactions (15 students
answered a questionnaire)
Answer the following questions on a graded scale from 1 (poor) to 6
(very good / a lot)
1. How interesting do you think the course has been? 4.7
2. How do you evaluate your own effort in the course? 3.5
3. How much did you get out of the classroom teaching? 5.2
4. How much did you get out of reading Johansson’s compendium? 4.7
5. How much did you get out of reading the article compendium? 3.9
6. How much did you get out of using the CALL platform? 4.0
7. How much did you get out of working with exercises? 4.9
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Student reactions, cont.
Which part of the course did you like best?
– Contrastive analysis 3
– Learner language 4
– no difference 8
How often have you used the CALL platform?
– (almost) every week 2
– C. every other week 4
– C. 4-5 times 8
– C. 2-3 times 1
– once or not at all 0
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Student reactions, cont.
How user-friendly do you find the CALL platform?
– easy to use 9
– a little difficult to use 6
– very difficult to use 0
– don’t know 0
If you have used the CALL platform 4-5 times or more, what do
you use? (you may tick more than one alternative):
– reading material 12
– exercises 12
– quizzes 2
– sound material 0
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Free comments – what was the
best part of the course?
Instruction and obligatory assignments.
I liked the exercises in class best. You then get to see what you remember and get the
correct answer right away too.
Interesting material, exciting and inspiring lectures. I feel I learn a lot from writing
assignments and doing exercises.
The use of humour. It’s so easy to pay attention when the teaching is sprinkled with
humour.
Good lecture handouts and exercises, good information on the Internet.
The use of the parallel corpus has been very useful for learning contrastive analysis.
The demonstration of how you can systematically compare Norwegian to English for
teaching purposes and not least the demonstration of typical errors that Norwegian
students of English make.
This has been an incredibly exciting course. I’m going to be a teacher of English
and this course has been invaluable. The course highlights “our” use of English in
a good and comprehensible way and has taught me to identify errors and explain
them in a simpler way.
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Which aspects of the course
are you less happy with?
Apart from the early start at 8 a.m. I’m actually quite happy.
That it starts at 8.15; I’m not always ready to be taught at that time!
Maybe we should have had more teaching hours. (2 students)
We could have worked more with exercises during class.
We should have had student computers in the classroom.
We should have had computers available in the classroom. There should
have been more written assignments.
I think it’s a pity that we didn’t get he chance to practice using the CALL
platform in class. It would have been useful to have PCs in the
classroom.
Since the course was divided into two parts, CA and LL, it has often been
a little difficult to see the connection between these two, but maybe it’s
just me… NICE COURSE!
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Evaluation: summary
The students were generally extremely happy with the course and
the way it was taught.
Many of them emphasise the benefit they got from working with
exercises and the obligatory assignments; some would have liked
more exercises  the need for practical, hands-on work in a
course like this.
Some mention the need for more teaching hours.
Many express a wish for student computers and guidance in how
to use the corpora and the CALL platform.
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Exam paper (two parts had to
be answered
PART I (30%)
Define and discuss THREE of the following terms / concepts with
reference to relevant literature on the subject. Illustrate with
examples from NICLE and/or the ENPC.
a.
Interlingual vs. intralingual error
b.
Lexical teddy bear
c.
Congruent vs. divergent correspondences
d.
Translation effects
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Part II of the exam paper
Write an essay on ONE of the following topics. You are expected to use evidence
from the ENPC and/or NICLE in your paper.
1.
Explain the concept of writer/reader visibility and show how it is manifest in
English texts by Norwegian learners (as compared to other groups of
writers). Use the attached texts 1-4 from NICLE and LOCNESS for
exemplification. In addition you should study the use of I and you in NICLE to
give an account of the contexts in which they occur.
2.
Study the verbs look and sound and their Norwegian correspondences in the
ENPC. Include inflected forms. What do the translation patterns reveal about
the uses and meanings of these words?
LL
CA
3.
Discuss how parallel corpora and learner corpora can complement each
other in the study of learner language and the improvement of language
LL & CA teaching.
Study the correspondences of Norwegian finnes (including its inflected
forms) in the ENPC. What are the English correspondences? What – if any –
LL & CA difficulties would you assume the expression of finnes would create for
Norwegian learners of English? Then study material from NICLE and state to
what extent your predictions were correct.
4.
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Exam statistics (19 students)
6
4
2
0
A
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B
C
D
E/F
Bibliography
Aijmer, Karin and Bengt Altenberg. 1996. Introduction. In Aijmer, K., B. Altenberg
and M. Johansson (eds.). Languages in Contrast. Papers from a Symposium
on Text-based Cross-linguistic Studies. Lund: Lund University Press. 11-16.
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2000/2001. The Integrated Contrastive Model: Spicing up
your data. Languages in Contrast 3:1, 95-124.
Granger, Sylviane. 1996. From CA to CIA and back: An integrated approach to
computerized bilingual and learner corpora. In Aijmer, K., B. Altenberg and M.
Johansson (eds.). Languages in Contrast. Papers from a Symposium on Textbased Cross-linguistic Studies. Lund: Lund University Press. 37-51.
Johansson, Stig. 2007. Seeing through Multilingual Corpora. Amsterdam/New
York: Benjamins.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1998. Preface. In Granger, S. (ed.) Learner English on
Computer. London & New York: Longman. xiv-xx.
CALL
Username: contrastive | Password: spring08
http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos-dyn/studier/fleksibel/contrastive_analysis/CALL/CALL.php
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Corpora
English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus
http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/forskning/forskningsprosjekter/enpc/
International Corpus of Learner English
http://cecl.fltr.ucl.ac.be/Cecl-Projects/Icle/icle.htm
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The English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus
Parallel original texts
L1 original
English
L1 original vs. L1 translation
L2 original
Norwegian
L1/2 original vs. L2/1 translation
L1 translation
English
L2 translation
Norwegian
Parallel translated texts
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L2 original vs. L2 translation
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