Literature Review

Terminology Authentic Materials –Texts (written or spoken) designed for native speakers (Harmer 1991) –Text not specifically produced for language learning (Nunan 1989) Concordance Program/ Concordancer –Used to find examples of “authentic usage” –Operates on a corpus –Arranges words (maintaining context info) Alphabetically By frequency

Areas of Focus Assessment of language learning strategies –Curriculum design – is curriculum structured well? –Curriculum content – did student learn? Overcoming difficulties using authentic materials –Assessment of concordancers –Student preparedness language fluency Corpus investigation skills

Assessment of language learning strategies Curriculum content goals –O’Dowd (2003) exchange result in “intercultural learning” Qualitative one-year study Discussed both successes and failures Curriculum design –Ghardirian et al. (2002) Encounter of words >= 5 times Text contains 95% of known word tokens

Overcoming difficulties using authentic materials Assessment of concordancers (tool and usage skill) –Corpus investigation skills Mollering (2001) –German language learning –Concluded that concordancer is useful tool »German modal particles –Resulted in development of worksheets Kennedy & Miceli (2001) –Italian corpus in a language learning program –Students frustrated due to lack of own investigation skills –Resulted in curriculum revisions Curado (2001) –English for Special Purposes (ESP) »Concordancer useful for college-level learning St. John (2001) –Pilot German-English study of concordancer usage. –Corcordancer supplemented teaching materials –Students able to independently perform corpus investigations

Overcoming difficulties using authentic materials Assessment of concordancers (tool and usage skill) –Language fluency Wang (2001) –Chinese-English study on eight subjects –Students developed in-depth lexical knowledge