Integrating corpus tools on intensive CELTA courses

Abstract

In the fields of Corpus Linguistics and Teacher Education, there is a substantial body of research relating to corpus applications in the classroom. However, the majority of such work relates to teacher training in tertiary education. In this article, a research project is described in which corpus training was included as part of a Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA), the popular four-week teacher training programme. Specifically, the project focuses on web-based corpus tools that provide frequency information. Observations and evidence are offered from both the trainees' and trainers' perspectives, and the subsequent analysis reveals a number of trends. Overall, it is argued that corpus tools are a valuable training resource on CELTA programmes in terms of developing language awareness and assisting in lesson planning, but that expecting trainees to use corpus tools during teaching practice remains unrealistic. In the ensuing discussion, practical considerations are provided for the integration of corpus tools into CELTA programmes.In ELT, a premium is placed on the ability of the teacher to act as a model of the language. From assessment criteria on Cambridge teacher training awards to discriminatory 'native speakerism' 1 in job advertisements, the idea that the teacher should be the exemplar for their learners is prevalent. And yet, although teachers-in-training (trainees) taking courses like the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) are typically expert speakers, 2 often expert speakers only have partial knowledge of a language (Krishnamurthy 2001: 172).From personal experience, it seems that when entering teacher training programmes, many trainees are sensitive to the fact that their declarative knowledge of grammar is limited. In contrast, there is often a 'blind spot' for their incognizance of lexis and that their lexical awareness requires development too. Consequently, trainees regularly dedicate a disproportionate amount of their time to studying grammar while neglecting to consider key elements of lexis, especially collocation. This issue is only further compounded by the popular ELT coursebooks which are commonly used as resources on CELTA and predominantly adhere to a grammar syllabus.In order to address this discrepancy, one option is to incorporate corpora, i.e. 'large collections of naturally occurring discourse' (Chambers 2010: 345), into teacher training. To date, corpora remain underused in much

Corpus literacy instruction in language teacher education: Investigating Arab EFL student teachers’ immediate beliefs and long-term practices

“…The results of the present study concur with those of previous studies (e.g. Anthony et al, 2017;Çalışkan & Gönen, 2018;Ebrahimi & Faghih, 2017;Farr, 2008;Leńko-Szymańska, 2017;Naismith, 2017) in emphasizing the importance of corpus literacy instruction to fostering teachers' awareness of corpus linguistics and its pedagogical applications. The results also support previous research findings indicating that corpus-based teaching may be hindered by technical and methodological challenges (Farr, 2008;Naismith, 2017), difficulties in designing corpus-based materials (Çalışkan & Gönen, 2018), and teachers' instructional priorities (Anthony et al, 2017).…”

“…Anthony et al, 2017;Çalışkan & Gönen, 2018;Ebrahimi & Faghih, 2017;Farr, 2008;Leńko-Szymańska, 2017;Naismith, 2017) in emphasizing the importance of corpus literacy instruction to fostering teachers' awareness of corpus linguistics and its pedagogical applications. The results also support previous research findings indicating that corpus-based teaching may be hindered by technical and methodological challenges (Farr, 2008;Naismith, 2017), difficulties in designing corpus-based materials (Çalışkan & Gönen, 2018), and teachers' instructional priorities (Anthony et al, 2017). The study indicates that teachers' inability to implement corpus-based instruction may be caused not only by these factors but also by the nature of the courses taught and students' language learning needs.…”

“…Different research approaches were adopted in the studies integrating corpus literacy training into pre-service or student teacher education. In addition to exploring pre-service/student teachers' beliefs about corpus literacy integration, some studies (Breyer, 2009;Heather & Helt, 2012;Leńko-Szymańska, 2017;Naismith, 2017) evaluated teachers' ability to design or use corpus-based teaching materials during the training. Breyer (2009) engaged student teachers in Germany in corpus learning experiences from a learner-teacher perspective.…”

“…Using corpus output to generate teaching material and activities (p. 395) Despite the above-mentioned importance of corpus literacy, the studies integrating it into LTE programs are generally few (e.g. Breyer, 2009;Çalışkan & Gönen, 2018;Naismith, 2017). The dearth of corpus literacy studies has also resulted in some contextual research gaps.…”

A corpus analysis on the language on TV series

“…The relationship between corpus studies and language learning and teaching develops everyday with developing technology, and it draws more attention from every field related to language. Accordingly, more and more studies are conducted every day related to the possible contributions of corpora to Second Language Acquisition including course design (Hou, 2014), development of course materials (O'Dell & McCarthy, 2008), classroom implementations (Molino, 2018;Liu, Lanling, Jiang & Su, 2018), teacher training practices (Caliskan and Kuru Gonen, 2018;Naismith, 2016;Zareva, 2016); teaching writing skills (Yang, 2018;Staples, Biber and Reppen, 2018), vocabulary instruction (Yusu, 2014;Wang and Zeng, 2018), grammar instruction (Liu, 2011;Liu and Jiang, 2009), speaking skills (Gomez Sara, 2016), and reading skills (Brodine, 2001), etc.…”