The use of Corpora in language teaching

Corpus linguistics refers to the study of language based on collections of authentic written or spoken texts, known as a "corpus".

Put even more simply: think of it as taking a bunch of books, articles or conversations, and using computers to find out how people actually use language and how it changes over time.

It is useful for many things, such as learning languages ​​in a better way better or understanding how we communicate in different situations.

"Many fields of linguistics are relevant to English language teaching in schools, and this research focuses on how ‘corpus’ linguistics can be useful," writes Kavanagh to inn.no.

Kavanagh has carried out his doctoral work in the PhD programme in Teaching and Teacher Education (PROFF). His thesis is titled "How Corpora Can Be Useful in English Language Teaching in Norwegian Schools". 

The advantages of corpora in language learning are: knowledge of how often a word or phrase occurs, information about conventional usage, practice in critical thinking, access to authentic language data and deep learning.

The doctoral project of Barry Patrick Kavanagh involved a national survey of English teachers in primary and secondary schools, where the aim was to find out how widespread the use of corpora is. He has also had follow-up interviews with teachers using corpora.

Other teachers were introduced to corpora, and interviewed about their perspectives. Finally, curriculum-linked corpus exercises were designed by the author for secondary schools, influenced by teachers' perspectives.

"The research is both of significance to linguists who want to ‘bridge the gap’ between corpus linguistics and teaching practice, and to teachers who need solutions for what the curriculum requires in their English teaching: authentic language data, explicit language learning, language awareness, critical thinking, in-depth learning, and digital skills," writes Kavanagh.

The main findings of the PhD:

• In the national survey of English teachers, only 34 out of 193 teachers answered they had done some work with corpora.    
• Corpus-using teachers who were interviewed said they used online corpus interfaces (not downloadable software), and the aspects of language teaching and learning they used corpora for were linguistic variation and vocabulary.    
• Teachers introduced to corpora who were interviewed found corpora useful for teaching and learning vocabulary, and perceived the challenges to using corpora to be: usability (‘user-friendliness’), lack of teacher IT skills, pupil-corpus interaction challenges (complexity of software etc.; lack of pupil interest in language), and lack of teacher need (language mistakes ‘obvious’ to teachers in the lower years of education). 
• The dissertation recommends a collection of bespoke corpus exercises matched to the curriculum and specific pupil levels, which avoids challenging software or interfaces, uses free and accessible corpora, does not give the impression that the approach is only for linguists, and does not require prior teacher training to use it.

Here you'll find more information about Barry Patrick Kavanagh's public defence on 4 December 2023.

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