From pedagogically relevant corpora to authentic language learning contents

  • Authors:
  • Sabine Braun

  • Affiliations:
  • Englisches Seminar, Universität Tübingen, Wilhelmstrasse 50, D-72074 Tübingen, Germany sabine.braun@uni-tuebingen.de

  • Venue:
  • ReCALL
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

The potential of corpora for language learning and teaching has been widely acknowledged and their ready availability on the Web has facilitated access for a broad range of users, including language teachers and learners. However, the integration of corpora into general language learning and teaching practice has so far been disappointing. In this paper, I will argue that the shape of many existing corpora, designed with linguistic research goals in mind, clashes with pedagogic requirements for corpus design and use. Hence, a ‘pedagogic mediation of corpora’ is required (cf. Widdowson, 2003). I will also show that the realisation of this requirement touches on both the development of appropriate corpora and the ways in which they are exploited by learners and teachers. I will use a small English Interview Corpus (ELISA) to outline possible solutions for a pedagogic mediation. The major aspect of this is the combination of two approaches to the analysis and exploitation of a pedagogically relevant corpus: a corpus-based and a discourse-based approach.