Teaching English with Corpora A Resource Book

Table of contents

List of figures

List of tables

List of abbreviations

List of appendices

Acknowledgements

At-a-glance chapter taxonomy

Corpora in and for TESOL

1. Using concordance lines to teach participial adjectives

Sean Sutherland

2. Starting out with phrasal verbs

Rosie Harvey & Irene Marín Cervantes

3. Teaching collocations with ‘Survey Says’

Robin Sulkosky

4. A grand problem and a jolly solution: Unmasking false friends with corpus analysis

Natalie Finlayson

5. Raising awareness of first-language interference using parallel corpora of subtitles

Elen Le Foll

6. If you speak English, take one step forward: Teaching conditionals through kinesthetic activities

Riah Werner

7. Preposition repair: Empowering learners to fix their errors

Amy Tate

8. KWIC searches for quick answers: Solving word choice problems

Pamela Everly

9. She said she told him: Patterning in reported speech

Michael H. Brown

10. Using VocabProfilers to select texts for extensive reading activities

Thi Ngoc Yen Dang

11. Talking about the weather: Exploring adjective use with Sketch Engine for Language Learning

John Williams

12. Food talks: Using corpus data to link cooking methods with types of food

Vander Viana

13. Profiling let and make with the Corpus of Contemporary American English

Ben Naismith

14. Corpus exploration of phrasal and Latinate verbs

Eric Nicaise

15. Minimal prep quizzes: Using online corpora to foster vocabulary learning

Nick Canning

16. Helping learners identify high-frequency words

Shoaziz Sharakhimov & Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov

17. Writing online reviews

Natalia Mora-López

18. Exploring similes in corpus data

Natalie Finlayson

19. Exploring register variation in the use of indefinite pronouns

Irina Pandarova

20. Using corpora to explore varieties of English

Natalie Finlayson

21. Searching for frequent words for pronunciation activities

Roger W. Gee

22. Abstract nouns in picture descriptions

Tomáš Mach

23. Tell me what your collocates are and I will tell you who you are

Tülay Dixon & Daniel Dixon

24. I feel kinda blah! Investigating language use in blogs

Maristella Gatto

25. I see what you mean: Exploring figurative uses of language

Sally Zacharias & Jane Evison

26. I was able to learn a new point: Examining the difference between could and was/were able to

Martha Michieka & Theresa McGarry

27. Learning about words in use with StringNet Navigator

Anastasiia Kryzhanivska

28. Investigating adverbials in British English: Although vs. though in spoken and written language

Lu Lu

29. Using Voyant Tools to enhance learners’ reflections on their writing

Nausica Marcos Miguel

30. Gender equality in the TESOL classroom: Exploring news stories from around the world

Vander Viana

31. Phrasal verbs in use: Investigating meaning and form

Vander Viana

32. Keywords in amateur online film reviews

Chad Langford & Joshua Albair

33. Formulaic language in amateur online film reviews

Chad Langford & Joshua Albair

34. Exploring semantic prosody with trainee teachers

Jenny Kemp & Luke Timms

35. A smile which melted her heart: Exploring metaphors in English corpora

Wendy Anderson

36. Small words? Discourse markers in spoken language

Loretta Fung

37. I’m so sorry: Intensification in American English across time

Anne Barron

38. Thanking and responding to thanks in American English: Language patterning and contextual appropriateness

Anne Barron

39. Whilst I do not object, I strongly believe... Exploring spoken argumentative and persuasive discourse

Elen Le Foll

40. Register variation in newspapers: Working with multidimensional analysis in English language teacher education

Vander Viana

Part B: English for Specific Purposes

41. Exploring terms in English for specific purposes

Nicole Brun-Mercer

42. Teaching verbs using learner-compiled corpora

Peter Dye

43. Is there a better choice? Verb-noun combinations in academic writing

Valdenia Almeida, Barbara Malveira Orfanò & Deise Dutra

44. Problem and solution markers: Exploring lexical combinations

Eman Elturki

45. Cloze exercises for mixed-ability groups: Using the Academic Word List Gapmaker

Loretta Fung

46. Signaling transitions in academic writing

Nicole Brun-Mercer

47. Boosting your message: Using adverbs for impact in business writing

Linda Slattery, Catherine Prewett-Schrempf, Andrew Pullen & Matthew Urmston

48. Using the British National Corpus to teach phrases from spoken and academic English

Paweł Szudarski

49. Using keyness to teach about academic speaking

Michael Suhan & Kyle Lucas

50. Teaching small-group academic discussions

Valeriia Bogorevich & Elnaz Kia

51. Which words should I look up? Identifying unknown high-frequency words in English for academic purposes

Jenny Kemp & Laurence Anthony

52. Reflecting and acting on academic vocabulary use

Katie Mitchell Burrows

53. Which verb should I use? Disciplinary variation in reporting verbs

Joseph J. Lee

54. Using Google Scholar to support lexical choices in English for academic purposes

Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov & Randall Sadler

55. Exploring collocations in the Corpus of Contemporary American English

Sharon Hartle

56. How can I be more specific in my writing? Exploring relative pronouns in English for academic purposes

Jenny Kemp & Laurence Anthony

57. Don’t write like that! Avoiding contractions in academic writing

Megan Bruce

58. Climate change or global warming? Analyzing, interpreting and reporting findings

Robert Poole

59. Research findings for all: Popular science communication on global challenges

Luciano Franco & Vander Viana

60. Exploring the speech act of confirming/verifying information in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English

Ildiko Porter-Szucs

61. Identifying noun–verb patterns in scientific abstracts

Mónica Rodríguez-Castro & Spencer Salas

62. Using a concordancer to teach how to write about results

Tatyana Karpenko-Seccombe

63. Using corpora to explore vocabulary for writing conclusions

Tatyana Karpenko-Seccombe

64. Finding your academic voice: Use of nominalizations in academic writing

Megan Bruce

65. Investigating complex noun–noun modification in academic prose

Sabrina Fusari

66. Exploring adverbs for cohesion and critical voice

Andrew Drummond

67. Exploring discipline-specific and paper-specific vocabulary

Anastasiia Kryzhanivska

68. Language patterns and rhetorical moves in research papers

Eman Elturki

69. Investigating references to a celebrity in a do-it-yourself obituary corpus

Rudy Loock

70. Thanking politely and saying no gracefully to business invitations

About the contributors

Index

Biography

Vander Viana is Associate Professor in Education, directs the Master’s course in TESOL and is the founder/leader of the Language in Education Research Group at the University of East Anglia. His areas of research expertise include corpus linguistics, English for academic purposes, TESOL and language teacher education.

"This book does a really admirable job of bridging the gap between theory and practice in computer-aided language learning. It is unique in providing not just a wide range of practical and motivating activities, but also a clear and accessible rationale for each activity. Crucially, this means that readers are equipped with both a set of ideas they can implement immediately and a set of sound principles they can use to design their own activities. Books like this, which foster principled practice, are all too few, and I thoroughly recommend this volume for teachers and teacher educators who would like to gain practical and theoretical understanding of this field." – Prof Ivor Timmis, Leeds Beckett University.

"This volume is a treasure trove of activities ready for classroom use. Corpus activities are presented in a teacher-friendly, easy to use manner, with topics ranging from General English to English for specific purposes for a variety of levels. A must have for any teacher interested in using corpus resources in their classroom." – Prof Randi Reppen, Northern Arizona University.

"English language teachers have been waiting a long time for a book like this. It is a wide-ranging and practical resource book that will give teachers so many ideas for using corpora in the classroom in a step-by-step way. This book really will bring corpora into the classroom." – Dr Anne O’Keeffe, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick.

"Corpora have revolutionised research in language and linguistics over the past 50 years, but also have much to offer in practical everyday aspects of language teaching. Teachers do not need to be corpus linguists to benefit from corpus tools in preparing their own materials and activities, but a general awareness of the potential of corpora and their uses should form a substantial part of any language teacher training programme. This book fills a long-standing need for simple, accessible, relevant and inspirational activities that can be used ready-made (many with online handouts) via a step-by-step outline of procedures, or inspire similar activities on related language points.

Based on the contributors’ varied experiences and designed with the teacher firmly in mind, each of the 70 chapters is short (usually 3 to 5 pages) and self-contained, and can be dipped into at any point for teaching English for general or specific purposes. And dipping into it is certainly worthwhile, as the range of activities reveals the breathtaking potential of corpora to impact so many different dimensions of language teaching and learning. It soon becomes clear that corpora can help far beyond the obvious vocabulary and lexicogrammar, extending into pragmatics, discourse and pronunciation for all the skills, as well as topic-related content, from selecting level-appropriate texts and authentic examples in different registers or disciplines, to creating stimulating activities for teaching and learning, revising and self-correcting, and so on.

I was enthusiastic about this book when I saw the title and aims, more so when I read the list of contributors and then the thoughtful introduction (a chapter in its own right to set the scene and rationale before outlining the book), and finally thrilled when I actually opened the chapters! Some classic activity types alongside so many ideas I would never have thought of, some tools that were new to me and new uses of familiar ones (all of which seem to be freely available), even subverting some non-corpus tools such as Google Scholar. If I were a literary critic, I’d be using phrases like ‘staggering tour de force’; suffice to say that I’ll be getting several copies ordered." – Prof Alex Boulton, ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine.