Anne Buckley & James Wilson University of Leeds

1. IntelliText at Leeds: achievements and challenges in fostering a culture of corpus-based language learning Anne Buckley & James Wilson University of Leeds

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; • how corpora can be integrated into language programmes; • how you can make the most of corpora in your teaching. • Demo (using IntelliText to teach EFL) • Challenges in integrating corpora in L&T

3. What is a corpus? • Any collection of texts • Usually large, structured and machine-readable • Annotated (lemmatisation, POS-tagging, metadata) • 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. Corpora and language programmes • Corpora should support and not replace existing modes of delivery • Blended learning: tradition and technology • Autonomous learning • “Hands-on” and “Hands-off” approach (Boulton 2008) • Tutors’ input is essential: prompts for independent learning • Corpora are a very useful addition to the teaching toolkit: they can enhance students’ language competence and make tutors’ work easier

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. IntelliText beyond Leeds • IntelliText training will be offered at student outward mobility events that are being planned by the HEA • 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)

10. 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

11. Demo: using IntelliText to teach EFL

12. IntelliText: uses for students • To find meanings • To investigate context • To investigate frequency of use of synonyms • To correct work • To produce accurate and idiomatic writing • To find collocates • To investigate grammar e.g. tense used with a particular expression

13. IntelliText: uses for teachers • To answer difficult questions • To justify corrections • To find synonyms when writing • To analyse student writing • For research e.g. literature analysis – look at which adjectives are used to describe certain characters

14. Possible student exercises • Look at connectives in context e.g. however, moreover, nevertheless • Look at hedging language in context e.g. may, could, suggest • Look at tenses used with particular expressions e.g. to date, not yet • Look at tenses/verbs used with particular expressions e.g. Have you ever...?

15. Challenges

16. Corpus-based language learning: where we’re at now • Despite the many available corpora and corpus tools, corpus-based language teaching is practised by a small dedicated group of enthusiasts (and almost exclusively in HE) • Corpora have not become established in the mainstream of language learning and teaching; outside EFL they are used very rarely • Almost 80% of teachers have never heard of corpora (Mukherjee 2004) • Most tutors don’t know how to use corpora, what to use them for or how they may benefit their teaching

17. Why? • In the past users needed to be familiar with computer syntax to input complex string codes; many tutors still think that corpora are “too technical” • There is a lack of documentation • Corpus-based tools and functions have tended to reflect corpus developers’ or corpus linguists’ interests rather than users’ needs • There has been insufficient collaboration between corpus developers and language tutors: i.e. between creator and user • Little has been done to promote corpora and corpus tools

18. Ways forward • Corpora are of little use without supporting, pedagogically relevant and needs-driven exercises or a methodology for their application: for corpora to become established corpus­-based materials, a corpus-based teaching methodology and corpus-trained tutors are essential • language tutors,we need you! • More training (interactive sessions, departmental seminars) • IntelliText training on PGCE programmes