Mittuniversitetet

There has been much discussion about the persistent gap between research and practice in the use of corpora in the classroom (Chambers 2019; Frankenberg-Garcia 2012 among others), despite strong evidence of its benefits (Boulton 2017). Chambers (2019) points out that the majority of studies into data-driven learning have been carried out by those with a particular interest and skill level, predominantly in higher education. Developments in corpus training in teacher education courses (e.g. Farr 2008; Naismith 2017; Zareva 2017) may lead to change, but so far there is little evidence that this results in corpus use directly informing teaching practice, or even that it is reasonable to assume that it should (Naismith 2017).  Nevertheless, the need to complement studies on data-driven learning by research-focused practitioners with a broader base of studies by practising language teachers has been highlighted (e.g. Boulton 2010; Chambers 2019). It seems, though, that this will only happen if such teachers find an accessible way to integrate corpus use into classroom practice, and are convinced of its value to students. 

With this in mind, I examine our experience with second level student teachers of English at MidSweden University, and their engagement with corpora. Although these students often carry out corpus-based research in final independent projects, corpus applications tend to be perceived as a research tool and play little to no part in their subsequent teaching practice. To encourage an alternative perspective, at an early stage in their course one new student teacher group was assigned specific teaching-related corpus-based tasks using web-based software, with limited-size corpora provided. They were then asked to consider the feasibility of using similar methods in their teaching practice. I discuss their reactions and evaluate this as a possible step towards normalising corpus use among teachers.    

Boulton, A. 2010. “Learning outcomes from corpus consultation.” In M. M. Jaén, F. S. Valverde, & M. C. Pérez (Eds.), Exploring new paths in language pedagogy: Lexis and corpus-based language teaching, 129–144. London: Equinox.

Boulton, A. 2017. “Corpora in language teaching and learning.” Language Teaching 50: 483–506. DOI:10.1017/S0261444817000167

Chambers, A. 2019. “Towards the corpus revolution? Bridging the research-practice gap.” Language Teaching 52: 460–475. DOI:10.1017/S0261444819000089

Farr, F. 2008. “Evaluating the use of corpus-based instruction in a language teacher education context: Perspectives from the users.” Language Awareness 17:25–43. DOI: 10.2167/la414.0

Frankenberg-Garcia, A. 2012. “Raising teachers’ awareness of corpora.” Language Teaching 45: 475–489. DOI:10.1017/S0261444810000480

Naismith, B. 2017. “Integrating corpus tools on intensive CELTA courses.” ELT Journal 71: 273-283. DOI:10.1093/elt/ccw076

Zareva, A. 2017. “Incorporating corpus literacy skills into TESOL teacher training.” ELT Journal 71: 69-79. DOI:10.1093/elt/ccw045