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Serendipity Expanded

Serendipity Expanded. Exploring new directions for discovery learning. Silvia Bernardini School for Translators and Interpreters University of Bologna Forlì - Italy silvia@sslmit.unibo.it. Discovery learning - 1 The highlights. The learner: a traveller ( vs. a researcher)

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Serendipity Expanded

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  1. Serendipity Expanded Exploring new directions for discovery learning Silvia Bernardini School for Translators and Interpreters University of Bologna Forlì - Italy silvia@sslmit.unibo.it

  2. Discovery learning - 1The highlights • The learner: a traveller (vs. a researcher) • The teacher: a guide (vs. an instructor) • The corpus: a stimulus (vs. an oracle) • The aim: the development of “capacity” (rather than competence)

  3. Discovery learning - 2Concordancing large corpora Advantages size and variety  initial enthusiasm,confidence Disadvantages limited  decreasing interest, frustration, reference use

  4. DL: New directions • Idea: • Combine different corpora and corpus analysis tools • Objectives: • Increase chances of serendipitous encounters (motivation) • Raise the learners’ consciousness • intertextuality (Seidlhofer 2000) • scope of observations (applicability and variability)

  5. The occasion • 4th year research seminar In preparation for their final dissertation • Schedule 10 weekly meetings (1h30m) • Status: Perceived as an extra burden Very heavy compulsory work load and attendance requirements

  6. The students • 10 (volunteers) • All translators-to-be • Good command of English • Little familiarity with corpora and software (both theory and practice)

  7. The ground to be covered • Familiarising the participants with available corpus tools • Bringing home to them a different view of language use patterning vs. slot-and-filler • Offering chances to experience DL... • …and to apply all the above to translation and/or language learning/teaching tasks

  8. The corpora The BNC The BNC-Imag The BNC Sampler The Rushdie Monolingual Corpus and The Rushdie Parallel Corpus (Zanettin 2000) A home-made fiction comparable corpus (ITA-ENG)

  9. How we got on - 1 • Introduction: The phraseological viewpoint Mother tongue examples, foreign language exercises • Investigating phraseology with a large corpus (BNC) (high) standard(s) • From CatRef queries to “specialised” corpora extremely high

  10. How we got on - 2 • Using different corpora to understand texts Chapter 1 of S. Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh • Using different corpora to translate texts and evaluate translations monolingual (gen & spec), parallel and comparable corpora • Assignments Either translate ch. 1 of Rushdie’s novel Grimusor give a presentation on phraseology from a corpus linguistics perspective to students of the “English language pedagogy” course

  11. What the students said - 1 • They liked the idea of being in charge, of feeling competent (it does not often happen); • rapidly appreciated the relevance to their concerns as future translators and teachers; • independently started to reflect on their mother tongue as well as the foreign language; • answered questions that had not been tackled directly in class (is this approach relevant for high school teachers/students? How can it be adapted?)

  12. What the students said - 2 • They wished they had more time • Frustration 1: if things are the way we presented them, one can never stop learning the language • Frustration 2: once you realise the way the language works, you are not confident in your output/intuition anymore

  13. Desiderata • Complement this DL experience with more text-based and student-centred work (e.g. Seidlhofer’s approach) • Repeat the same experience with a reference corpus for Italian and less disparate translational resources • The CEXI Corpus

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