IBLT week7
So Jung Park
2012-10-15
Reinhardt (2010)
Corpus linguistics has produced many revelations about the nature of language use and language learning, but has failed to have the initially predicted revolutionary impact on linguistics and L2 teaching (Reinhardt 2010). Corpus-informed findings and approaches need to be integrated into pedagogical curricula and materials gradually. A class accustomed to traditional presentation of vocabulary may initially resist the inductive thinking demands of a concordance, but an instructor can prepare a concordance, selecting the lines to include beforehand, to be sure the instances presented are relevant and the context discernible. Contextualization of corpus data is crucial, and can be done, as suggested by Flowerdew (2009), by balancing bottom-up inductive methods with top-down, genre-focused instruction (Reinhardt 2010). Corpus may seem to fit upper level students but it could be fit for lower level students’ too. Inductive analysis, active learning, and language awareness are not beyond lower proficiency learner’s capabilities (Reinhardt 2010). Combining corpus and other approaches like communicative and constructivist approaches, it can empower learners and balance the prescriptive message that relying on corpus-based data may imply (Reinhardt 2010).
Perez-Paredas (2011)
This study addresses the actual use of corpus-based resources in two groups of university EFL learners while completing different focus-on-form activities under two research conditions: guided and non-guided corpus consultation. Research question was whether learner interaction with corpus-based resources differs under different corpus consultation conditions (Perez-Paredas 2011). Researchers examined the computer-tracked behavior of learners in the guided and non-guided corpus consultation groups. Participants are supposed to do a task about it-cleft and subject-verb inversion after negative / restrictive (Perez-Paredas 2011). From the results, researchers found that people in the experimental group visit different websites and they visited google frequently to complete their tasks. Both studies showed no big differences. Learners are more like digital natives. Concordancing programs seems more reliable to learners nowadays. Learners feel comfortable to use technology tools compare to traditional class learners.
Compare and contrasts
There are slight differences between these two articles. One article is more generally explained corpus study and the other one is about conducting a study about corpus articles. From reading these two articles, I realized that corpus study is subjectively new area compare to other skills in SLA. Many researchers tried to combine and applies corpus to actual lessons. As with the development of technology, learners and teachers are more easily access to corpora and corpus-informed learning and teaching resources. I think concordancing program is a brilliant program.
Clarification questions
In the first article, (Reinhardt 2010 p.243) “with the Chomskyan view that language is modular. What does that mean?
Application question
With elementary students (low level students), how can teachers use DDL in class?
