MAAL7001 Applied corpus linguistics
COURSE TEACHER:
Dr. Lisa Cheung
Email: lisa@hku.hk
OVERVIEW
Corpus linguistics allows us to see how language is used today and in different contexts, enabling us to teach language more effectively. By introducing the principles of corpus linguistics, this course will help students to understand various corpus approaches and tools that can be applied to language teaching and learning.
The practical focus of the course encourages students to consider how to construct, annotate and derive statistical trends from large collections of both native and learner language data, either currently existing collections or of the student’s own collection. Students will receive hands-on training in corpus building and annotation software, and learn about automated techniques for dealing with large data. There will also be a focus on how corpora can be used in the English language classroom for the purposes of data-driven learning.
AIMS
This course introduces students to a variety of applications of corpus linguistics, including phraseology, lexicogrammar, register, English for Specific Purpose, and curriculum design.
COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the course, students will be expected to:
- Understand the basic principles of corpus linguistics;
- Understand and evaluate current trends in applied corpus research;
- Develop the methodological capabilities to conduct small to large scale corpus research projects using existing and self-built corpora; and
- Identify and test how and when language corpora can be used for pedagogical purposes.
SCHEDULE
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KEY REFERENCES
Core Reading
Hunston, S. (2002). Corpora in applied linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Readings
Anderson, W. & Corbett, J. (2009). Explaining English with online corpora: an introduction. China: Palgrave.
McEnery, T., Xiao, R. & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An advanced resource book. Routledge.
O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From corpus to classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Teubert, W., & Cermakova, A. (2004). Corpus linguistics: A short introduction. London. New York: Continuum.
ASSESSMENT
You have to submit a 2500-word written assignment (individual).
Option 1:
An assignment on a topic negotiated with the course teacher which will be related to the planning for and the integration of corpus in a language teaching context. The corpus-based materials shall be included in appendices.
Option 2:
Produce a small-scale research project to build, annotate and extract meaningful results from a self-built corpus (e.g. a corpus of your students’ written essays) or an existing corpus (e.g. a publicly accessible corpus like BNC). The assignment will be an analytical discussion of the corpus findings in relation to lexis, grammar, phraseology, or register/discourse.