d expertise bjcctives effective Part A Data collection and mat 1 Using corpus data in the Gwy Introduction During the past 20 yea which language can be stu y of computers to hi possible to build Often they were was frequently matical class typically behaved. Nowadays, computers have developed in such a way that there is no fonger any restriction on the size a corpus can be. A corpus is Aathing more nor less than a collection of rexts input into a computer, and te number of texts will depend upon the uses that will be corpus. For example, if teachers want to know what type ofee ————————e a ee ae ee ee es ee Data collection and materials development Using corpus data in the classroom" by students stud acy, ida corpus of the books the students are requi lectures they are required to attend; and tl ly 125,000 for ‘start’, In the spoken data, ‘start* more freque ‘begin’, bur only just. ‘Commence’ is hardly used at all — there are only 99 examples, including those used in radio asts, also vary in frequency: ‘judg ice a8 fomimon as ‘judgement, and there are approximately five citations of ‘inquire’ to every four citations of ‘enquire’. ceds to be taught. course, only the frst stage in the whole teaching-learning process; it would nor, for example, identify how the items might be taught or even hhow they should be buile into a syllabus. Ie should, however; mean that ad the relevance of the items to their particular will assist the leacning of them. Specialised corpora of id are being built at the present time by teachers ina number of ‘urther details of speci ly be expended on them. Infrequent words are found in Chapter 2 of this book by Jane Willis, usually topic-specific, and can be acquired when needed. It is the however, also possible to build a much more general corpus, Seneral vocabulary, those words used across the board in a wide range 1ow which words are infeequent, as less is available for research into th For of copies, that is more diffeule to acquice, as the meaning is likely so ws these far more data is idea ng to the context. es as possible. For example, The Bank of English, the Ir has been argued that the common words are actually the ones by COBUILD ar University of Birmingham, which need less cea iow words of current En British, Ai ing as frequency of exposure will do the job for ally valid for and learning effort should go nt senses of words than into rare senses. There is an reason for so much data is to do with frequency — intransitive use of give” asin ‘the rope gave’, which all native speakers tency of words and the frequency of individual senses of words. Know, but which is rarely used. ‘The contexts it is used in are few and By doing a frequency count, it is possible to find out the relotve easily predictable. If students come across it, they will quickly unde frequency of words, eanging fr stand its mieaiting. However, the transitive use of ‘give’ in clauses such he’ | corpus of Ei to the least frequent; ax (she gave him a really lovely smile’, and “he gave an extremely boring ays be a very high proportion (up to so per cent) of talk’ is so common that many native speakers hardly even notice it. The hapaxlegomena, words which occur only once. Words which occur Only meaning of ‘give’ here is easily intelligible to learners, but what they a few times are usually more or less ignored by corpus linguists, as ther, Riight not realise is how important this particular structural pattern i= hot enough evidence as to how they are typically used in. the Native speakers use it all the time, as it allows us to focus on the even wage, father than on the action, and also to give as much (or as litle) tis easy to discover which is most frequent among words which are information as we want to about chat event. Often there is « rel near synonyms, for example ‘start’, ‘begin’ and ‘commence’. In the verb that could be chosen instead. For example, ‘he wh K of English, ‘start’ is about x0 per cent more frequent than semantically means nearly the same as ‘he smiled at her’ ~ although they begin’, with ‘commence’ being very infrequent having just over 000 are potentially very different in what they indicate, Both are relevant to‘she eth ‘he account mon and students should in English text be encouraged show the pre ot show any ci He gave her a smile —He smiled at her He gave the door a kick ~ He kicked:the door -houe period. If r themselves how ing, of course, that and in many cases a discussion wi a chosen in preference to one in in teaching where we focus on a word, rather chan on meanings are said to of abstract ones, Be Using corpus data in the classroor the more common uses out of the class- room, The word ‘thing’ is a further example. It docs, of course, mean “What's th more often used Literacy isn't the same thing as Axeally strange thing happene: And it js also frequently used 28a prefacing device to tll the person you are addressing what your attitude isto what you are saying Because you can use ‘thing? more or less any time when you do not ecify more precisely what you are saying, it is an extremely \seful word, bur learners rarely use it as frequently as native speakers do, This s makes their language too precise and therefore ly a sm to study a concordance of ‘thing, they can be alerted to all its uses and can t tase these themselves. its up one of the significant differences between id language in the real world, Most classroom lanned (or, at fanned) and therefore is lacking res of unplanned discourse, which include is such as ‘something like thai .