Corpus construction and specialist vocabulary learning by Chinese and Finnish EAP students Nicole Keng University of Vaasa Simon Smith Coventry University

Outline Background Motivation for corpus construction Research questions UK study Finland study Findings Future directions

DDL: corpus consultation Authentic Representative But “In a nutshell, learners and teachers simply aren’t convinced.” (Boulton 2008) Looking at data may be difficult or boring for some “Reading concordances is too tough for most learners. It’s an advanced linguistic skill” (Kilgarriff 2008)

How to motivate? Task outcomes: sense of ownership (Tyne 2009) Movie-making vs. in-class presentation Blogging vs. hand-writing assignments Making a corpus vs. using a corpus Deployment of non-language skills IT skills Specialist knowledge Hobbies Academic major

Corpus construction by learners Zanettin (2002:7) learners compile a corpus from the web, and analyse it with Wordsmith Tools "constructing the corpus was as useful as generating concordances from it”. Charles (2012) “revelatory moment when they see the patterns appear before their eyes in their own data” Lee & Swales (2006) and Boulton (2008) some students purchased own copies of Wordsmith Tools 

Aston (2002) Corpus construction vs. making a fruit salad! Control. You can choose your own ingredients Text types Special domains Certainty. If you make your own fruit salad, you know what went into it Can identify texts Understand why things are as they are Creativity. Corpus-making, like cooking, can be fun! Critical awareness. Through trial and error, and consulting books and experts, you will probably become a better chef (whether of corpora or fruit salads) Communication. Making your own corpus or fruit salad can have more social spin-offs than opening a supermarket tin opportunity to talk with co-constructors and with other chefs, as well as with the consumers of the end product.

This study Two EAP cohorts Credit bearing courses Coventry University In-sessional Coventry University (nearly all) Chinese students University of Vaasa (all) Finnish students

Research questions What do students think about studying specialist vocabulary using corpora? Are there differences between perceptions of the two cohorts? Are there differences in the progress made by the two cohorts?

UK cohort 94 international students 4 EAP groups (21-25n) IT literate 88 Chinese L1 AFIB major Y3 top-up 4 EAP groups (21-25n) IT literate General vocabulary OK Weaker areas Subject knowledge Technical vocabulary

Resources constructed and used by students Specialized academic corpora from course materials and the web Vocabulary portfolios from these corpora

The AFIB course Duration: 1 year Various modules in Accountancy, Finance and Business (50 ECTS) EAP support module 10 ECTS 2 hours

Corpus construction teaching plan Allow 20-30 minutes per week Familiarize students with corpus consultation Use lecture slides to create mini-corpus Use mini-corpus keywords to bootstrap web corpus Use web corpus for vocab and text study to create Excel vocabulary portfolios Occasional vocabulary quizzes

 

What can they do with the corpora? Lists of domain words and multi-word units Word sketches Concordances Link to original texts from WWW Bootstrap new corpora from web Create vocabulary portfolios

Course Moodle

Lecture slides example

Finland cohort 74 students at undergraduate level CEFR B2-C1 Stage 1: Exploring corpus with Sketch Engine Concordances, Word Sketches, Sketch Differences, Thesaurus Stage 2: Writing reflective vocabulary reports Stage 3: Constructing corpora by collecting texts from their subject areas Stage 4: Creating vocabulary portfolios BNC OWN CORPORA

Stage 1: Introducing Sketch Engine functions Student training slide Concordances give you example sentences from the corpus Word Sketches give you summary of word usage, showing which other words commonly go with the keyword, and in what grammatical relation they stand to it Sketch Differences show you how apparently similar words differ in usage Thesaurus shows you a list of similar words to the keyword

Stage 2: Examples of reflective vocabulary reports ‘This function shows me different meanings of the word by giving me example sentences. I learnt that I can use the word profit in the meaning of advantage or good obtained from something. It can also be used in the meaning of money gained in business for instance: The resulting value is profit before tax.’ (Student 1) [our emphasis]

‘Concordances shows me that one word can be connected to different meanings. The word turnover for example can be used in various meanings. It can mean company’s sales or the changes among employees.’ (Student 2)

‘Word Sketches give me a summary of word usage, showing which other words commonly go with the keyword, and in what grammatical relation they stand to it. For example I learnt that the word profit as object can be used in a sentence like you can make a profit from services. It can be used with preposition for example in the sentence like he sold a car at a profit.’ (Student 1)

Stage 3: Creating a Corpus

Stage 4: Examples of Vocabulary Portfolio (Student 1) 16.11.2018 Vaasan yliopisto

(Student 2) 16.11.2018 Vaasan yliopisto

Vaasan yliopisto | Yksikkö | Kalvosarjan nimi (Student 3) 16.11.2018 Vaasan yliopisto | Yksikkö | Kalvosarjan nimi

Vaasan yliopisto | Yksikkö | Kalvosarjan nimi (Student 3 again) 16.11.2018 Vaasan yliopisto | Yksikkö | Kalvosarjan nimi

Survey results Question: What is the most useful skill/knowledge you learned in this course?

Survey results Question: What is the most enjoyable part of this course?

Student Feedback ‘It’s useful to find the right words to use when writing because sometimes I don’t know the best way to express what I want to say in my sentences.’ ‘This is a very useful tool to improve own knowledge of vocabulary. In my case, it shows many words that have been used in the news and magazines.’ ‘Using corpora is effortless and fun way to learn vocabulary!’ Creating a specialized corpus could be useful when it comes to researching a particular subject or learning a subject in English. It is useful because of the different results which are much more relevant than searching on a much more general English corpus. I thought that the Sketch Engine was useful software not only for my English study but also for AFIB study In addition, the process of create my own corpora was very enjoyable and makes me sense of accomplishment.

Some differences (From reflective reports) Awareness of collocations Grammar patterns Exploratory approach For example I learnt that the word profit as object can be used in a sentence like you can make a profit from services. It can be used with preposition for example in the sentence like he sold a car at a profit. (Student 1) (From survey) Still favour vocab quizzes, list-based learning I like to remember words in a sentence. I think making word portfolio is good […] If it is used as a resource and read it again and again, it can be very useful. (Student 9)

Next steps Quantitative comparative study Measure and compare effectiveness of our approach Compare improvement of specialist vocabulary knowledge Pre- and post-test Qualitative study on vocabulary learning styles Based on differences found in this study Interviews Investigate continuing use by students "Ongoing use also indicates substantial commitment to the personal corpus" (Charles, 2014: 39)

Conclusion and Summary A discovery-based approach Promote learner-centredness and task ownership Raise learner awareness of relationship: Integrate language and transferable skills “Using corpora in the classroom is FUN!” exploration in language learning learner progress

Links https://www.sketchengine.co.uk/ http://bootcat.sslmit.unibo.it/ http://www.slideshare.net/SimonSmith29/summer-sch-glossaries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0abSIJSn0

References Aston, G. (2002). The learner as corpus designer. In B. Kettemann, & G. Marko (Eds.), Teaching and learning by doing corpus analysis (pp. 9-25). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Boulton, A. (2008). Bringing corpora to the masses: free and easy tools for language learning. In N. Kübler (Ed.), Corpora, Language, Teaching, and Resources: From Theory to Practice Bern: Peter Lang. Charles, M. (2012). Proper vocabulary and juicy collocations: EAP students evaluate do-it-yourself corpus-building. English for Specific Purposes, 31, 93-102. Charles, M. (2014). Getting the corpus habit: EAP students’ long-term use of personal corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 35, 30-40. Kilgarriff, A., Husak, M., McAdam, K., Rundell, M. & Rychlý, P. (2008). GDEX: Automatically finding good dictionary examples in a corpus. In Proceedings of the 11th EURALEX International Congress, Barcelona, Catalonia Lee, D., & Swales, J. (2006). A corpus-based EAP course for NNS doctoral students: Moving from available specialized corpora to self-compiled corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 25(1), 56-75. Tyne, H. (2009). Corpus oraux par et pour l'apprenant [Spoken corpora by and for the learner]. In A. Boulton (Ed.), Des documents authentiques oraux aux corpus: Questions d’apprentissage en didactique des langues (pp. 91-111). Nancy, France: Mélanges CRAPEL. Zanettin, F. (2002) DIY Corpora: The WWW and the Translator. In Maia, B., Haller, J., & Urlrych, M. (eds.) Training the Language Services Provider for the New Millennium. Porto: Facultade de Letras, Universidade do Porto, 239-248.396396