2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Using Corpora for Promoting Student Self-Learning in English Education
| Project/Area Number |
14510557
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | Ritsumeikan University (2003-2004)
Tezukayama University (2002) |
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Principal Investigator |
UMESAKI Atsuko Ritsumeikan University, College of Policy Science, Professor, 政策科学部, 教授 (20269963)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2002 – 2004
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| Keywords | corpus / English education / ESP / corpora / stress shift / Lancaster / IBM Spoken English Corpus / British National Corpus |
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| Research Abstract |
Computer corpora, large bodies of spoken and written texts, have been used intensively since 1990 for linguistic studies and great achievements have been made. However, there has been little practical application of corpora in the English-Language Teaching (ELT) classroom. The aim of the present study is to investigate effective ways of using corpora in English education.
Objectives and goals for implementing the use of corpora in the ELT classroom were considered. Corpora are good resources for providing self-access to examples of actually spoken and written English. As a long-term goal, it was proposed that students be encouraged to use both dictionaries and corpora in learning English, especially in writing English, without the help of teachers. The proposed major specific objectives were that students learn frequently-used expressions by searching examples in corpora, and that they be given opportunities to infer some rules in English from the examples.
The procedure for using the British National Corpus was developed in reading and listening classes. The corpus was searched to find examples of words and phrases which were not listed in the dictionary, and opportunity given for inferring the meaning of them from the examples. Linguistic phenomena, such as differences in spelling and lexis between British and American English, were taught by the use of the Brown, LOB, Frown and FLOB corpora. In teaching prosodic features, such as the relationship of falling tone and 'sentence' ending, and stress shift, students were instructed to infer rules from examples in the Lancaster-IBM Spoken English Corpus.
For teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP), expressions used in research papers were examined, and methods for teaching the writing of abstracts were also proposed, based on the findings.
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