Corpus Linguistics & Language Pedagogy

Co-edited with Shannon Kincaid and Amy Traver, volume will be published with Sense Publishers https://www.sensepublishers.com

Contents:
Arts

“Object Poetry” as a Source of Inspiration for Design Studies
Ravid Rovner

Arts Integrated Learning Through Poetry: Implementing Awareness, Metaphor, and Play Across Curriculums
Alison Cimino

Biology

Poetry in a Biology Classroom
Urszula Golebiewska

English

An Initiation into Academic Discourse with Poetry
Susan Lago

Poetry and Student Learning
Angela Hooks

"Thirsty Women and Fuckboys:" Teaching Shakespeare with Memes
Kathleen Alves

In Deference to Dreams Deferred: Langston Hughes' poem, “Harlem (A Dream Deferred)” and its Application Across the Curriculum
Alice Rosenblitt-Lacey

History

Expressive Content Writing: The Inclusion of Poetry in Undergraduate History Courses
Frank Jacob

Philosophy

Pedagogy in Verse: A Philosophical Approach to Poetry across the Curriculum.
Shannon Kincaid

Empowering Poetic Defiance: Baudelaire, Kant and Poetic Agency in the Classroom
Joshua M. Hall

Sociology

Contextualizing Math and Poetry in Community College Courses: Impacts and Implications in Introduction to Sociology
Amy E. Traver

How do native (L1) and non-native speakers of German (L2) differ in a
map-task dialogue setting when it comes to disfluency phenomena? Do L1 speakers tend to
have similar disfluency behaviors as L2 speakers? The current thesis aims to examine and
describe similarities or differences of L1 and L2 speaker groups, while contrasting two small
map-task corpora. Since disfluencies comprise a variety of phenomena, the focus of the study
centers around fillers such as the German types äh and ähm and their potential differences.
Fillers which are also sometimes called filled pauses or hesitation markers are one of the most
discussed disfluency phenomena, yet the theories surrounding them are still contested.
Essentially, the purpose of my master‘s thesis is to provide evidence that fillers present
regularities which are expected to differ from one language group to the other (L1 vs. L2).

The spread of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) counts as one of the major causes for the dramatic English language prominence in specialized communication scenarios (‎Albl-Mikasa 2013:4; Nickerson 2013:445). In the literature, there is some evidence that interpreting from ELF speakers is generally more demanding than interpreting from native speakers of English in terms of cognitive load during the in-conference performance (Albl-Mikasa 2010; 2013). This additional processing cost in source-text comprehension, analysis, short-term memory management and target text production when interpreting from non-native speakers deteriorates the interpreter’s performance (Gile 1999; 2005; Albl-Mikasa 2010). This is particularly true in Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) conferences where a high degree of accuracy and precision are required (cf. Nobs et al. 2011).
Since EFL and LSP appear to be intrinsically intertwined phenomena in the interpreting practice, they should not be overlooked during interpreter training. The use of authentic material, such as audiovisual material from LSP conferences in ELF scenarios can contribute to expose students to real life situations and raise their awareness about the relevant quality benchmarks. The choice of building a multimodal corpus (Straniero Sergio & Falbo 2012:31) is key to provide a comprehensive understanding of real life interpreting settings and discourse practices (Kellett Bidoli 2006). In addition to audio and video layers, captions should be manually transcribed and aligned to allow comprehensive terminology and stylistic analyses.
The project is still at its design stage and a variety of corpus building issues are being considered (cf. Knight 2011:324). The first is discourse representativity, which in turn is dependent on the ELF speakers' willingness to collaborate, as an explicit permission from conference participants is required to record, store and process any content or data in which they are involved as speakers. Second, the generalizability of subsequent quantitative and qualitative analyses relies on the creation of significant samples to fully represent the relevant conference setting and discourse. In addition, some key pragmatic aspects are still to be further refined, such as 1) practical corpus deployment with interpreting students and 2) actual corpus impact on the students’ learning curve.

This study measures lexical development in the writing of two groups of non-native speaking students on an international foundation programme at a UK University. The higher-level group entered the programme with IELTS 7.0 in writing and the lower-level group 5.5 in writing. Laufer and Nation's (1995) Lexical Frequency Profile has been used, along with Antwordprofiler (Anthony, 2014), to calculate what proportions of common and less common vocabulary were present in their writing at the beginning and end of the academic year. These proportions were then compared with a benchmark taken from a corpus of 30 essays of accomplished students' writing. The results show that the higher-level group moved firmly into the range of the native-speaker benchmark, but the lower-level group made more limited progress. Other measurements based on lexical variation give a different picture of lexical development in the lower group, indicating that lexical knowledge should be treated as a multi-dimensional construct. Implications for EAP courses are discussed.

Рецензия на на учебник Дж. Томаса «Изучаем английский язык со Sketch Engine: корпусный подход к исследованию языка»  (Thomas J. Discovering English with Sketch Engine: A Corpus-Based Approach to Language Exploration. 2nd ed. Versatile, 2016).

Like the advent of the telescope, computers today can provide ways of looking into language patterns that cannot be seen with the naked eye. From this perspective, this chapter argues for the centrality of corpus use in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. It shows how the computer can offer new ways of looking at language and of relying on real data to see how language is used. A historical background is provided so as to enable an approach to corpus linguistics, one which moves away from reliance on intuitions and abstract examples. Having made the claim for the strengths of corpus linguistics as a way to develop students’ autonomy in language learning, an online corpus and some concordancers are provided, and examples are offered of how they could work in a classroom. The chapter ends with research and educational prospects in the area.

　本研究で開発した日本語学習者のための例文検索システムは、web上の膨大な電子情報をコーパスとして活用し日本語学習者のレベルにあった例文提示を可能にしたシステムである。語彙指導には例文の提示が欠かせないが、学習者のレベルにあった自然な日本語の例文を大量に作成するのは容易ではない。このシステムによって、学びたい単語や表現を含む自然な例文の検索が容易に行えるばかりでなく、文法的特性や共起関係などについても学習することが可能になる。本システムの評価実験は、日本語母語話者および非母語話者の日本語教師によって行った。評価項目は、１．各語について十分な量の例文が提供できているか、２．文として整っているか、３．意味が通じるか、４．例文として適切か、５．レベルにあっているかである。評価実験の結果明らかになった問題点に関しては、今後システムの改良を行っていく予定である。

The Proceedings of the 39th Siouan and Caddoan Conference follows the meeting of the 39th Siouan and Caddoan Language Conference from May 30-31, 2019 at Northeastern State University in Broken Arrow, OK.  This volume was published on July 31, 2020 in through the Northeastern State University Department of Languages and Literature and edited by Ryan M. Kasak, Samiron Dutta, and Justin T. McBride.

The papers are copyright of their original authors and are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY 4.0).

Interest in Japanese manga (comics) has increasingly become an important reason for studying Japanese as a second language. As a result, there has also been a trend toward trying to use manga as an educational resource, with claims that it is “realistic” and “easier”. However, with a lack of comprehensive research on language in manga, still much is unknown—a major problem given that understanding how manga function as a medium is essential to utilizing them effectively. By introducing a corpus of eight manga series compiled for linguistic research, this paper considers some of the claimed advantages and disadvantages. To that end, this paper focuses on two points: One, manga’s particular orthographic styles and their effect on ease of reading, and two, realism and stereotypes in gendered speech patterns. While supporting the use of manga as a learning resource, this paper will argue that manga’s linguistic characteristics necessitate more consideration.

The study of the history of the English language (HEL) encompasses a broad sweep of time and space, reaching back to the fifth century and around the globe. Further, the language has always varied from place to place and continues to evolve today. Instructors face the challenge of fitting this vast subject into one semester of study and the challenge of engaging students with unfamiliar material and techniques. This volume guides instructors in choosing among many possibilities to design an HEL course to match their own interests and institutions.

The essays consider what subjects of HEL to include, how to organize the course, and what textbook to assign. They offer historical approaches and those that are not structured by chronology. Sample assignments provide opportunities for students to conduct original research, work with archives and digital resources, and investigate language in their communities. The essays also help them question notions of linguistic correctness.

Corpus Linguistics has been noted to be a trendy approach in language research in the last few decades as it is closely related to technological advancements. The rising number of available online corpora and the advanced concordancing software have been urging and boosting researches on potentials and uses of corpora in language analysis and teaching. In this study the researcher tried to fill in the gap apparent in the Saudi EFL context of poor or lack of corpora use. Therefore, the researcher has investigated the effect size of using corpus-based approach on vocabulary gains and retention. He has employed quasi-experimental study to thoroughly investigate the study questions. A diagnostic pre-test, posttest and delayed posttests have been employed with both groups, the control which has been taught using conventional approach and the experimental which has been taught using corpus-based approach. At the end of the treatment test scores for both groups have been statistically analyzed to find out the differences. The results of posttests and delayed posttests showed a statistically significant differences in favor of the experimental group, which indicated the effectiveness of using corpus-based approach on vocabulary gains and retention rates. Consequently, the researcher has recommended integrating corpus pre-service and in-service training for EFL teachers. He has also suggested enhancing friendly user interfaces for available corpora to be easily accessed and used by teachers and learners. Finally, combining conventional tools alongside with corpus-based method is recommended in some instances to meet some emerging challenges with corpora use.

In this study, I aim to discuss the innovative linguistic practices present on the popular social media website, Tumblr. I take both a qualitative and quantitative approach in doing this, firstly discussing linguistic variation that I have seen on the website, and then undertaking my own sociolinguistic analysis of corpora from Tumblr and BuzzFeed, to compare the ways in which users alter their language between the two websites.

The study aims to posit possible explanations for such linguistic variation on Tumblr, arguing that much of this innovation is socially marked, and reflective of millennial social attitudes. The variables in the data-driven portion of the research are already widely examined within speech: intensifiers, discourse markers, and quotative expressions.

Moving the focus of analysis to these variables within written CMC allows for a very current sociolinguistic study that is relevant to the internet age.

Research has unveiled numerous problems regarding the teaching and learning of EFL in Morocco. One of these problems concerns students’ performance in reading comprehension. Many studies have also shown that students’ vocabulary knowledge plays a central role in predicting their performance in a variety of language skills, notably in reading comprehension. This being the case, this research set out to evaluate the vocabulary load of the reading comprehensions texts in second year baccalaureate textbooks of English. This was actualized through determining how much text coverage students could achieve with their vocabulary knowledge. For this purpose, a sample of 106 Moroccan students were non-randomly sampled, and their vocabulary knowledge was assessed using an updated version of the VLT. In parallel, the vocabulary profiles of the reading texts in the three existing EFL textbooks were described using the Vocabulary Profiler software. Results have shown that students have a rather impoverished vocabulary knowledge of approximately 1317 word families, which have thus revealed a gap between their actual knowledge and the lexical load contained in the textbooks. A number of pedagogical implications have been drawn from these findings and directions for further research have been suggested.

Despite strong interest and support from researchers, Data-driven Learning (DDL) and the use of corpora in language classrooms has failed to become mainstream. One obstacle may be that even teachers interested in DDL may be unsure how to implement it in ways appropriate for their context. This presentation is a brief overview of DDL followed by ideas of how to introduce and utilize DDL with novices, i.e. learners unfamiliar with DDL, especially, though not exclusively, in Japan..

Este estudio investiga la producción a través del role-play de tres actos de habla en español por parte de tres grupos diferentes de hablantes: nativos de español, nativos de inglés con un nivel avanzado de español, y nativos de inglés con un nivel intermedio de español. Se han tenido en cuenta variables como el nivel de los estudiantes, su experiencia en el extranjero, cuántos años llevaban estudiando la lengua o su propia autopercepción del nivel que tienen. Las transcripciones de los 108 vídeos grabados se han clasificado de acuerdo con los tres actos de habla, los tres grupos, y las estrategias de acción y reacción de cada acto de habla que habían establecido investigaciones anteriores.
Los resultados muestran que los grupos difieren entre sí tanto en la interpretación de cada uno de estos actos de habla como en las estrategias utilizadas para producirlos y reaccionar a ellos, tanto verbal como gestualmente, demostrando así que la competencia pragmática no se ha adquirido al mismo nivel que la competencia gramatical en los estudiantes del grupo avanzado. Se ha podido observar, pues, transferencia negativa tanto en las estrategias utilizadas, como en la extensión y el número de los turnos producidos en los grupos de hablantes no nativos.
Como producto final, además de esta tesis, se ha creado un corpus multimodal al cual tanto investigadores como profesores y alumnos podrán acceder fácilmente a través de internet para poder trabajar con los vídeos y sus transcripciones, las cuales pueden ser descargadas fácilmente.

Palabras clave: corpus, corpus multimodal, pragmática, actos de habla, competencia pragmática, lenguaje no verbal, ELE, adquisición de segundas lenguas, adquisición de lenguas extranjeras, SLA, FLA, FTA, actos amenazantes para la imagen, pragmática intercultural, pragmática sociocognitiva, sociolingüística, rechazo, cumplido, disculpa.

The aim of this study is to find out the learner centeredness in the course syllabi of
English language teaching at secondary level in PTB. The study will also explore the use of socio-
cultural elements in the course content of the book of 9th class. For the purpose to evaluate the
learner centeredness of the course syllabi at secondary level in PTB, rubrics for determining degree
of learner centeredness presented by Cullen and Harris (2009) were adopted and it was evaluated
whether the course contents meet the required criteria. It was found that learning rationale, syllabus
focus and learning outcomes meets the requirements of learner centeredness while teacher and
students’ role, collaboration, outside resources and assessment and evaluation don’t meet the
criteria of rubrics.
KEY WORDS: language teaching, language learning. learner centered approach, syllabus, culture.

This study aims at analysing the differences between two lexicological databases for English language, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). Taking as a starting point the lexemes LEARN and TRAVEL, we study the differences between 'traveling' vs 'travelling' and 'learned' vs 'learnt' in COCA and the BNC, i.e. in American and British English, respectively. We also explore the functions and possibilities each corpus has, taking always into consideration the differences and similarities they present between them. Likewise, we try to explain why there are differences in the results between both databases, and how we can make the most of both of them. Our findings show that the best would be to know beforehand the characteristics that each corpus has, since each corpus contains different texts with a different English variety, covers different periods, and contains as well a different number of words. To put it in a nutshell, we conclude that both corpora complement each other, and depending on the goal of our research, we may want to use one or another, or even both of them.

(ES)
Este estudio tiene por finalidad analizar las diferencias entre dos corpus lexicológicos de la lengua inglesa, el Corpus de Inglés Americano Contemporáneo (COCA) y el Corpus Nacional Británico (BNC). Tras tomar como punto de partida los lexemas LEARN y TRAVEL, estudiamos las diferencias entre 'traveling' vs. 'travelling' y 'learned' vs. 'learnt' en el COCA y el BNC, es decir, en inglés americano y británico, respectivamente. Asimismo, exploramos las funciones y posibilidades que tiene cada corpus, sin dejar de tener en cuenta en ningún momento las diferencias y similitudes que presentan entre ellos. También tratamos de explicar las causas de las diferencias de los resultados entre ambas bases de datos, y cómo podemos sacar el máximo provecho de ambas. Nuestras conclusiones muestran que lo mejor sería conocer de antemano las características que tiene cada corpus, puesto que cada corpus contiene diferentes textos con una variedad de la lengua inglesa diferente, cubre diferentes períodos, y contiene también un número diferente de palabras. Finalmente, concluimos que ambos corpus se complementan entre sí y que, dependiendo del objetivo de nuestra investigación, podemos querer usar uno u otro, o incluso ambos.

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners find some phrasal verbs problematic because of their idiomatic and polysemous nature. They are frequently used in spoken English and textbooks suggest an arbitrary way in teaching them. Cognitive linguists proposed that the particle plays a major role in determining the meaning of such phrasal verbs. This study investigated the effectiveness of a cognitive approach (i.e., Rudzka-Ostyn's Model) in teaching taught and new phrasal verbs including metaphorical ones. Using a list of frequent phrasal verbs, a quasi-experimental design was used in which an experimental group was required to create mind maps of the common meanings of each particle with example phrasal verbs. The control group, on the other hand, was asked to memorize the frequent senses of the most frequent phrasal verbs along with their translations. The experimental group did not outperform the control group on the post-test. This was attributed to a number of problems such as the fact that some senses given by some particles are not outlined in Rudzka-Ostyn's Model. Further, the analytical procedure followed by students to cognitively understand phrasal verbs should be made explicit and address the interaction between the verb and the particle. Additionally, following a cognitive approach, instructors should focus more on the particles up and out since they have many senses and contribute a lot to phrasal-verb formation.

This paper explores the recent trends regarding the maintenance and shift in the use/learning of French and English in Cameroon. While Ze Amvela in an earlier study had shown that the shift in language use/learning in Cameroon is towards the direction of the majority official language, French, recent trends show the reverse. A movement towards English has been observed in the last fifteen years. This is an interesting phenomenon due to the fact that it contradicts the usual trend. The current paper thus explores the motivations for, and implications of, this phenomenon for the learning and use of these two official languages in Cameroon in the near future.

Within the communicative approach, often the assumption has been that with the right exposure, students will simply “pick up” the vocabulary required for learning and using English, and thus there is no need to focus on or teach it. Yet, as many teachers can attest, this is frequently not the case, and there have been recent efforts to reemphasize vocabulary learning and teaching in both research and practice. This article surveys the literature on word lists for vocabulary teaching in English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL), especially for adults, briefly summarizing their potential for learners and teachers in learning and teaching English vocabulary. After discussing general and academic word lists, it introduces contributions from recent corpus research resulting in 2 lists of English formulaic expressions and 8 subject-specific English word lists, in fields varying from agriculture, business, and engineering to medicine and theology. Finally, it offers suggestions for their potential in vocabulary teaching.

This chapter introduces important issues to consider for those preparing to teach a course on the history of the English language. It also provides an overview of the various chapters in the MLA book, Teaching the History of the English Language.

This paper is a report of the preliminary analysis of the Tamil corpus developed at the Central Institute of Indian Languages. It discusses the distribution of characters (initial, medial, and final), syllables, and words in terms of their frequencies and coverage in the corpus. The comprehensive information with regard to various linguistic elements is extracted from the Tamil corpus. It does not envisage covering all the aspects but restricts to certain aspects of the written Tamil corpus.

As was the case with many newly independent African nations, Somalia was beset by a language problem whose complexity had begun well before independence and the unification of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland in 1960. With three languages (English, Arabic, and Italian) used as media of communication in government offices and in schools, various Somali administrations struggled to contain the impasse but found no tangible solution. Barely three years after Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in October 1969, he had his military regime introduce the Somali orthography in the Latin alphabet. Based on this milestone, Siad Barre's military rule is highly commended for taking a remarkable step forward in what came to be known as the Somalization project. However, officials of the government and Somali scholarship failed to

This study attempts to investigate the level of awareness and the opinions of Turkish EFL teachers about the use of corpora in language teaching to promote discourse-pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms. To these ends, the study used two instruments: a survey with
42 Turkish EFL university lecturers and interviews with 10 of them. Data analysis was
conducted through both quantitative and qualitative type of analysis. The results of the survey
showed that 11 % of the participants were familiar with the corpora and used them in their teaching while the others did not have any particular knowledge of corpora and concordancers due to lack of awareness, knowledge and time. The results support the idea that in spite of the developments in corpus applications, the issue of the use of corpora has
not been fully recognized by EFL teachers. The EFL teachers need corpus consultation and trainings about the use of corpora in language classrooms. Moreover, the analysis of the
interviews showed that the teachers had positive opinions about the corpus examples as they provide authentic and functional elements of spoken English. Thus, the study includes some pedagogical implications about the use of corpora in language classrooms to promote discourse-pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms.

Today’s frequent intercultural contacts and migration bridge earlier cultural gaps and carry recipes further than ever before. Cookery books are governed by their own laws not only in the choice of vocabulary and fixed expressions, but also grammar and style, and require specialised knowledge of the culinary arts in both source and target cultures. Their translations should accordingly not only be linguistically impeccable and technically accurate, but also read as if written by a professional.
This paper discusses key characteristics of English-language recipes from the author’s over decade-long experience and demonstrates how the employment of corpus tools can help choose the most appropriate collocation or turn of phrase, validate hypotheses concerning crucial but non-salient grammatical choices (such as presence or absence of articles, or preference for singular or plural) as well as stylistic, spelling and punctuation conventions. Several categories of snares lurking for the translator are outlined with the help of a self-compiled corpus (1m tokens, ≈12k types), and numerous concrete examples presented vindicating the brownie points gained in teaching ESP and specialised translation through analyses of recipe vortals, the Wikipedia and cookery software in ways different from those envisaged by their creators. The article concludes with menu writing tips.

Μετά από αιώνες το κείμενο δεν αποτελεί πια πρόφαση για μελέτη της γραμματικής. Η κειμενοκεντρική προσέγγιση σκοπεύει να καταστήσει το ίδιο το κείμενο κέντρο της γλωσσικής μελέτης, να αποκτήσουν οι μαθητές γλωσσική επίγνωση και κειμενική ικανότητα. Σε αυτό το άρθρο παρουσιάζονται τα είδη λόγου με τα γραμματικά χαρακτηριστικά τους και γίνεται μια εφαρμογή της κειμενοκεντρικής προσέγγισης σε ένα κείμενο που προέρχεται από το βιβλίο της γλώσσας του ΟΕΔΒ της Γ΄ Γυμνασίου και στις ασκήσεις που το συνοδεύουν, χρησιμοποιώντας παράλληλα κείμενα από ηλεκτρονικό σώμα κειμένων.

This LIA International Conference and Cultural Events 2015 proceeding elaborates how a freeware concordancer named  AntConc facilitates teaching and learning of grammar to 21st century learners and it suggests some activities to encourage students' self-discovery and induction of grammar structure

In the past forty years, electronic corpora have come to prominence as a resource used by linguists. While their use remains a source of debate and controversy to this day (see for example Newmeyer, 2003; Prodromou, 1997; Widdowson, 1991) their contribution to linguistics in general, and English linguistics in particular, as well as to language teaching, is now widely acknowledged. Corpus tools have not only strengthened the position of descriptive linguistics, but have also enhanced theoretically-oriented linguistic research. This contribution has been felt most strongly in English linguistics, as it was pioneering work undertaken on English language corpora, such as the Brown corpus (Francis & Kučera, 1964), which set the agenda for much of the work that has been undertaken using corpora since then. In this chapter we will examine the nature of corpus linguistics, review the general contribution of corpora to linguistic theory and then explore in more depth the contribution of corpora in four major areas:
• language description in general, and the production of reference resources in particular;
• lexicogrammar and the lexical approach to language analysis and description (lexical grammar);
• the teaching of English as a foreign language;
• the study of language change, with particular reference to the role that corpora have to play in theoretically informed accounts of language change.