Using corpora for bespoke language teaching

1. Using corpora for bespoke language teaching James Wilson University of Leeds j.a.wilson@leeds.ac.uk

2. Structure of today’s presentation • An introduction to corpora and the IntelliText interface • Corpora and their role in language learning and teaching: • what advantages corpora offer; • corpora and outward mobility • Demo (IntelliText for LSP) • general use • domain-specific (politics/economics)

3. What is a corpus? • Any collection of texts • Usually large, structured and machine-readable • Annotated (lemmatisation, POS-tagging) • Reference corpora: Russian National Corpus, British National Corpus, Czech National Corpus, etc. • Specialised corpora: collections of texts on a specific topic or in a more specific domain • Interface: the tool we use to access and exploit corpora

4. Learners can use corpora to … • View grammar in context • Display complex grammatical forms not shown in conventional bilingual dictionaries • Access hundreds of authentic examples at the touch of a button • View vocabulary in a broader context, extracting common and useful collocations • Grasp subtle differences between words and phrases • Verify their linguistic intuition • Achieve a better grasp of style and register • Augment their vocabulary, in particular on themed topics and in specific domains • Test controversial points of grammar and compare prescribed grammar with actual language use

5. IntelliText project • Run by the Centre for Translation Studies (CTS), University of Leeds, UK • A one-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): 2010-2011 • www.corpus.leeds.ac.uk/it/ • Aimed to simplify and enhance corpus use for teaching and research in the arts and humanities • Needs-driven: functions suggested by users • Output = a versatile and intuitive interface

6. IntelliText ... • Allows access to monolingual corpora for 11 languages (there are several corpora for many of the supported languages) • Allows access to several bilingual corpora • Has 8 search functions (e.g. concordance, collocations, affix, keywords) • Includes a “Build Your Own Corpus” function that allows users to create and annotate their own corpora • Is freely available for download or for online use

7. At Leeds we use IntelliText ... • On general UG language modules (English, German, Russian) • In a weekly corpus class aimed at vocabulary building on themed topics (Russian) • On final-year dissertation modules on which students write their dissertations in the target language (German) • In LSP teaching (Business Russian, German for Professional Purposes, EAP) • For bespoke PG language training

8. BYOC and ad-hoc corpora • Ad-hoc corpora allow us to: • analyse domain-specific language in any area and (for which there may be few or no printed materials); • focus on (the language of) recent events (Syrian civil war, Thatcher’s funeral, Cleveland kidnap case, etc.): yesterday’s top news story is today’s lesson; • tailor tuition to the individual student: we can create corpora on texts relating to a PhD student’s research topic; • make use of a vocabulary-oriented approach to language acquisition on the basis of corpus-derived keyword lists.

9. Corpora and students as materials developers • In the SLAV3101 corpus class students created their own corpora (racism in football, fashion, US elections, Jimmy Savile) • They produced keyword lists and annotated vocabulary lists (with exercises) in a format that best suited them • They used programmes such as Anki, Quizlet and Memrise to learn the words from their keyword lists • Autonomous learning and flexible learning: students structure their own learning around topics that interest them and methods that work for them • Fun and achievement: students comment that creating corpora is fun and that there is a sense of achievement in building and working with their own corpora

10. IntelliText beyond Leeds • There are plans to introduce IntelliText as part of the Research Training Programme at the three White Rose institutions (Leeds, Sheffield, York) from next academic year • IntelliText is being used in Portland (Oregon) to create and tag learner corpora (Russian) • IntelliText is used at institutions across the world for language teaching and in linguistic research (esp. EFL) • IntelliText is being used as part of the HEA’s outward student mobility initiative

11. IntelliText on funded projects • KELLY (EU Lifelong Learning Project): corpus-derived multilingual flashcards • ReadingCorp (ARHC Collaborative Training Award): PG language training through domain-specific keyword lists • WritingCorp (UoL TESS funds): materials design to support IntelliText • White Rose Skills Development Project: PG language training & creation of academic corpora for Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish

12. Corpora and IntelliText for outward mobility • We intend to use IntelliText as in PG training to extract lists of domain-specific vocabulary and create exercises around key words and collocations • Students at the beginner and lower-intermediate level can use corpora for vocabulary acquisition on themed topics, many of which aren’t covered in standard teaching manuals • Students at the upper-intermediate and advanced level can enhance their writing skills • IntelliText - materials development – application in the classroom – new media – online flashcards

13. Corpora and IntelliText for outward mobility (2) • IntelliText allows students to structure their own learning around topics specific to their studies and/or that they are interested in • A corpus approach may benefit non-language students who need to learn domain-specific language quickly • The IntelliText tools can be accessed anywhere in the world and can be used on the move: ideal for study/work placements abroad • What’s realistic for non-language students?

14. Demo: using IntelliText http://smlc09.leeds.ac.uk/itb