Corpus Linguistics Will Change the Way We Teach
Cynthia M. Schuemann and Cheryl Benz
Many factors influence an educator’s decision-making process when it comes to choosing what to cover in a language lesson. Real driving forces include textbooks we teach with, handouts we supplement with, and curricula we have developed based on student needs. How can we feel assured that we are helping language students get the most for their investment? Are we really choosing the most valuable “nuggets” to impart? Corpus linguistics can help us to evaluate language resources and make informed decisions.
What is corpus linguistics? A corpus is a vast collection of words – a body of language samples taken from both written and spoken venues. With computer analysis of these authentic texts, linguists have come to conclusions about how we actually use grammar and vocabulary when speaking and writing. In addition to contrasting oral and written discourse, and they have contrasted language use from a variety of discipline areas. Modern computer applications are revolutionizing our understanding of language use and language teaching.
Two knowledge areas of particular value for language instructors to learn about are frequencies and collocations, proximal relationships among words. Spending time on teaching words we know students will encounter frequently in their academic careers makes sense to both teachers and students. The same can be said of grammar structures. Which tenses and sentence structure patterns do we use most often? For example, corpus linguists have discovered that simple present and simple past verb phrases are much more common in English than perfect or progressive phrases in both written and spoken forms. This knowledge can affirm an instructor’s decision to teach simple present and simple past tenses early and substantially. Stop for a minute and listen to any talk going on around you … which verb tenses are you hearing? Which verb tenses have you been encountering while reading this article? Focusing attention on frequency of occurrence can provide a sense of “value added” to lessons.
Word frequencies have long fascinated linguists and language teachers. The General Service List (GSL) of English words, also known as the West List, was developed from work initiated in 1936 and published in 1953. It includes a core of 2000 words considered essential and most frequent as derived from a manual study of five million words. This core list continues to influence our materials and teaching practices today. You may have noticed books, especially readers, at times indicate they are at a particular “word-level”. These counts come from rankings associated with the General Service List.
More recently, researchers have utilized computer analysis of text-based corpora to develop specialized word lists of vocabulary in additional categories to complement the 2000 most frequent word list. A most useful list, the Academic Word List (AWL) has been compiled by Averil Coxhead, from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She studied 3.5 million words from academic passages and identified root words from 570 word families that were commonly used in academic texts from all subjects. A complete list can be found by visiting her web-site at http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/averil_coxhead/
When preparing materials and making decisions about how to address vocabulary in our reading classes we have found a most valuable resource in a web vocabulary profiler[1]. The easiest way to locate this tool is to search Google for: Web Vocabulary Profiler.
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When you visit this site you will find a screen where you can insert any passage for analysis. The vocabulary profiler will provide a colorful chart and breakdown of which categories the words in the passage are coming from. For example, inserting the first paragraph of this article results in the following:
|
K1 Words (1 to 1000): |
56 |
82.35% |
|
K2 Words (1001 to 2000): |
2 |
2.94% |
|
AWL Words (academic): |
5 |
7.35% |
|
Off-List Words: |
5 |
7.35% |
Many factors influence an educator’s decision making process when it comes to choosing what to cover in a
language lesson Real driving forces include textbooks we teach with handouts we supplement with and curricula we have developed based on student needs How can we feel assured that we are helping language students get
the most for their investment Are we really choosing the most valuable nuggets to impart
Here we
have used differing fonts to contrast the vocabulary categories. On the web-site colors are used. You can see at a glance that factors,
process, supplement, assured, and investment are words that students will encounter with frequency across all
academic disciplines. These are
valuable words for students to learn and know.
A word like nuggets may arouse
curiosity. It is worth explaining, but
it is not as valuable for students to acquire as part of their active
vocabularies – and now you know why!
Once important
words have been selected from passages, an effective strategy for working with
vocabulary from reading is to practice with collocations. To collocate means to co-occur. There is a statistical tendency for certain
words to occur together. For example,
think of the word “arouse”. What words
comes next? Did you say
“curiosity”? Working with language
chunks facilitates learning. Encourage students to list common word
combinations when learning new words.
By learning word combinations, there will be a greater likelihood of
appropriate use when they later create original sentences or use new words in
conversation.
We hope
this taste for word frequency and collocation knowledge will inspire you to
look farther and enhance your decision-making choices about vocabulary from
reading!
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Collocation Activity Ideas
1. From a reading selection, ask the students to underline nouns and then write them in a list. Then, in a column next to each noun they could list compatible verbs (or adjectives).
Example:
|
factors |
influence, change, indicate, … |
|
an educator |
decides, chooses, develops, … |
2. Take examples from student writings of awkward collocations and have the students cross out the ones that don’t work.
Example:
|
|
man |
|
|
topic |
3. Make word boxes with a collocation dictionary, or have students “collect” phrases.
Example:
|
apply for a be out of a find a hunt for a look for a resign from a |
job |
|
a one-man a historical a touring a retrospective a contemporary |
exhibition |
4. Have students use collocations when getting ready to write an essay.
Example:
Some say getting tough on crime is they best solution. They advocate for long prison sentences for criminals. Do you agree or disagree?
- Ask the students to write down 4 nouns they might use in such an essay:
prison, criminal, crime sentence
- Have them look up the words in a collocating dictionary and choose the adjectives and verbs they need to express their ideas:
Examples:
go to/ send someone to/sentence
someone to (--) years in prison
convicted/dangerous/hardened criminal
prevent/crack down on/petty/violent
crime
death/heavy/life/severe/long/short/reduced/(--) year sentence
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5. Enter near synonyms into an on-line concordance program. Students can build charts for each word and then draw conclusions about the use of each word by noticing how the collocations are similar and different.
Example: injury/wound
Collins Wordbanks Online English Corpus http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/form.html
intentionally self-inflicted injury.
injury or death caused by
student who suffered a severe head injury and was in a coma for five
heart attacks, traumatic brain injury, and meningitis are
and grandfather's deaths by head injury and central nervous system
mental retardation, traumatic brain injury, and major mental disorders
retold the story of his Vietnam War injury and fired a shot at Arkansas
road construction, highway patrols,injury and death due to accidents had a bad arm--hurt--had hurt my arm injury and was on the verge of being
disabled (due to sickness or injury and cannot perform material
wanted him to go away. He dabbed his wound again and winced.
more than flesh and blood, he is open wound and enraged vulnerability.
her husband has recovered from his wound, and much to her surprise, the
had torn loose a flap of flesh. The wound burned and was bleeding
pressure, bandage firmly to protect wound. Check pulse to be sure for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable
beautiful scarlet garment out of the wound in his side. while minor complications such as wound infection or slight bleeding
|
self-inflicted severe head traumatic brain war arm sickness or |
injury |
or death |
|
dabbed his open recovered from his protect a fateful wound |
wound |
burned and was bleeding in his side infection |
How are the words injury and would similar but unique?
References
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.
Hill, J. & Lewis, M. (1999). LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations. London: Language Teaching Publications.Hunston, S. (2002). Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Cynthia M. Schuemann, Ed.D., is chair of the
Department of ESL and Foreign Languages at Miami-Dade College, North Campus.
Cheryl Benz, Ed.D., is chair of the
Department of ESL and Foreign Languages at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta