The Language Teacher
October 2003
Find Out for Real
Caroline Holden
British Council, Tokyo
QUICK GUIDE
Key Words: Corpus, lexis
Learner English Level: Intermediate to advanced
Learner Maturity Level: Senior high school and up
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Activity Time: 45 minutes
Materials: Computers with printers and Internet access
The Internet is a powerful tool to use in the classroom, but sometimes the sheer volume of information available can be daunting to both teachers and students. Using a corpus of real English to home in on and investigate a particular language item can be liberating for students used to the confines of a textbook or dictionary, and allows them to use the Internet as a resource in a very straightforward way.
If you haven't used an English language corpus before, take a little time to investigate. Talk to colleagues and find out what is available. I used the Collins Cobuild Concordance and Collocations Sampler, available at: titania.cobuild.Collins.co.uk/form.html.
Preparation
Step 1: Identify a piece of language the students have problems with using correctly. In my academic writing class students often used "persons" as the plural form of "person." For most occurrences of this, "people" would be the correct form. However, within a formal academic register, "persons" is often used to refer to a discrete group of people in an objective way, and this is an important concept for writers of academic English.
Step 2: To help in explaining the concept of the corpus to the class, print out a sample concordance (NOT using the problem language) to illustrate.
Step 3: Unless you are very sure of your students' computer literacy, prepare a worksheet giving step-by-step instructions for accessing the corpus. The more able students can zip through the process, while the one or two students who are uncertain about using computers will have the security of the written steps. It will also serve as a record for them to use in the future.
Procedure
Step 1: Explain to the class, using the sample print, the concept of a corpus as a word bank of real English, both spoken and written, which can be searched for occurrences of words. Give examples of the language that they are having problems with and tell them that they are going to use the corpus to investigate how this language is used in the real world (i.e., outside the classroom).
Step 2: Armed with a copy of the instructions, the students work in small groups (two is ideal) to look at the corpus concordances and print them out. My class printed out concordances for "persons" and "people." As they were interested in how to use this lexis in their writing, they only searched the corpus of written English.
Step 3: In groups students compare and discuss their findings. The tasks given to the students at this stage obviously depend on the initial problem. I asked students in my class to compare the uses of "persons" and "people" and try to formulate general rules for their use.
Step 4: Each group reports back to the whole class with specific references to the concordances. It is worth making sure you allow enough time for stages 3 and 4, as students become very interested in their findings and like to compare notes. I found that, without any prompting from me, students were able to give very clear reasons for using either "persons" or "people," supported by the real-life examples.
Student comments followed by related corpus entries
People--"…used when you're interested in the individual," "…people have emotions," "…have names"
… our inner cities until young people care about their communities and …
… on it. But my favourite singers are people like Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin,…
Persons--"…describing a group with the same characteristics," "…only interested in group of"
… Bingley mortgages are available to persons aged 18 or over. Written mortgage …
… point that sexual relations between persons of the same sex are necessarily …
Adapt and extend this activity to suit your students. I felt I could use the fragmented sentences given in the concordances to give gap-filling practice. Also, as my students were aiming to improve their writing, I thought about giving them one of the fragmented concordances to include in a short written paragraph. This has the multiple advantages of checking that they understand the register of the text and the use of the problem vocabulary, as well as giving writing practice.
This is really a very simple lesson to prepare, and equips students with a very powerful aid to autonomous learning.
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