Vol. 8. No. 4

A-1

March
2005

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Corpora and Language Teaching: Just a fling
or wedding bells?*

Costas Gabrielatos
<c.gabrielatoslancaster.ac.uk>
Department of Linguistics and English Language,

Lancaster University, UK

Abstract

Electronic language corpora, and their attendant computer software, are
proving increasingly influential in language teaching as sources of language
descriptions and pedagogical materials. However, few teachers are clear about
their nature or their relevance to language teaching. This paper defines
corpora and their types, discusses their contribution to language learning and
teaching, and provides examples of their use in class. It also outlines the
changes in knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed for learners and
teachers to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the availability of
corpus resources. Finally, the paper discusses the limitations of using
corpora in language teaching, and the potential pitfalls arising from their
uncritical use. Although the paper refers to research and teaching materials
and procedures relevant to English language teaching (ELT) it addresses issues
related to language teaching in general.

Introduction

Corpora first came to the attention of most English language teachers in 1987
with the publication of Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary, the
first corpus-based dictionary for learners. The following year saw the
publication of an influential paper on the use of corpus-derived and
corpus-based materials in the language classroom (Johns, 1988), although these
had been proposed earlier (e.g., Higgins & Johns, 1984; Johns, 1986; Leech,
1986; McKay, 1980; Sinclair, 1986).

Since then, corpus-based language studies and pedagogical materials have
grown exponentially; there is already a substantial and ever-growing body of
corpus-based research on language structure and use, as well as on language
learning and teaching (see Biber et al., 1998; Hunston, 2002; Kennedy, 1998;
McEnery & Wilson, 2001; McEnery et al., 2005, in press; Meyer, 2002;
Partington, 1996; Stubbs, 1996, 2001; Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). [1]
'Corpus' has now become one of the new language teaching catchphrases, and both
teachers and learners alike are increasingly becoming consumers of corpus-based
educational products, such as dictionaries and grammars. However, few teachers
are clear about the nature of corpora, or their significance for language
teaching, and fewer still have ever made direct use of a corpus. The questions
most frequently asked by teachers are: What is a corpus? How are corpora
relevant to language teaching? How can they be used? The first aim of this
paper is to answer those questions, provide an outline of the current state of
affairs, and give examples of corpus types and uses. [-1-]

The utility of corpora for language teaching has been questioned from
different perspectives. The sceptics have expressed reservations about the
ability of corpora to capture language use (e.g., Widdowson, 1991), or the
usefulness of native-speaker (L1) corpora in providing a model for teaching
(e.g., Prodromou, 1997), some going so far as to argue that L1 corpora can
intimidate learners (Gabbrielli, 1998), or disempower teachers (Dellar, 2003).
Conversely, the fact that corpus-based studies relevant to language learning
concentrate on those issues into which the use of corpora can offer insights may
be misinterpreted as implying that corpora are the be all and end all of
language teaching. [2] The second aim of this
paper, therefore, is to demystify corpora and define their place within language
teaching as a whole.

Corpus-based research and teaching have been carried out predominantly at
universities; therefore, teachers in other educational settings may think that
corpora are not relevant to their teaching situation, or that the knowledge,
skills and technology required to integrate corpora into their teaching are
beyond them. However, there have been articles on how teachers with minimal
computer resources can make use of corpora (c.f. Johns, 1991a, 1991b; Stevens,
1995; Tribble, 1997a, 2000). The third aim of this paper, then, is to
demonstrate that using corpora is not an either/or option, but that teachers in
different contexts can make use of them to different degrees to suit their
learners and facilities.

Corpora: Nature and types

What is a corpus?

Loosely defined, a corpus is "any body of text" (McEnery & Wilson, 2001,
p. 197), that is, any collection of recorded instances of spoken or written
language. For example, a pile of written assignments (e.g., essays) waiting to
be marked is, roughly speaking, a corpus. Let us assume that these assignments
have been written by students about to start a language course, and that the
teacher has not taught the students before. The teacher can read the essays to
form a general impression of the strengths and needs of the new class, but
he/she may also want to focus on specific areas of interest. For example, while
reading the assignments, the teacher may realise that the learners frequently
make collocation errors. In order to examine the problem more closely, the
teacher can go through the assignments, locate and list the unacceptable
collocations, and determine whether there are any recurring patterns, that is,
whether learners need help with the collocations of particular words, perhaps
words normally associated with the topic of the assignment.

In the case of a single class of twenty learners, this analysis might be
somewhat time consuming, but it would still be manageable. If, however, there
were one hundred assignments, the task would become impractical. However, if the
learners had submitted their assignments in electronic form, and if the relevant
software were available, the teacher could examine the use of specific
collocations in a hundred or more scripts in the same time it takes to manually
examine twenty. Better still, the teacher could observe more complex and
detailed patterns, and with greater accuracy. Moreover, this electronic corpus
would be a helpful resource for the teacher, as it would be available in the
future for the examination of other language aspects. The corpus could also grow
by the addition of new assignments, in which case the teacher could trace the
learners' development in given areas. This is why 'corpus' is currently
understood as "a body of machine-readable text" (McEnery & Wilson, 2001, p.
197). [-2-]

Imagine that at the end of the course our hypothetical teacher decides to
summarise his/her findings on the learners' use of collocations and present them
at a conference or in an article. How helpful would the findings be to teachers
in other contexts? In other words, how valid would it be to generalise from
these findings? Such a presentation or article would be useful, but obviously
any conclusions should be treated with caution, because the findings would only
reflect the specific group of learners, taught by the specific teacher, in the
specific geographical and social context. Also, the findings would reflect the
use of collocation in the learners' writing rather than their speech, and their
use in specific text types.

If the corpus contained texts by learners from all over a particular region,
then it would be possible to draw more reliable conclusions. Still, the corpus
compilers would need to include texts written by learners of the same level, and
ensure that the texts were of the same type and on the same topics. In other
words, the corpus would need to be representative of the type of learners
and texts that they wanted to examine (see Biber, 1993). Also, as it would not
be feasible or practical to collect texts by all the learners of the same level
in the region, the corpus compilers would have to select a sample of
texts from each class.

The same principles apply to native-speaker corpora. 'A corpus of English'
raises the question, 'Which variety of English?' Even if we restricted ourselves
to one variety (e.g., American or British English), it would be impossible to
create a corpus of the whole language, not least because language evolves
continuously. We can only collect a sample, and strive to make this sample as
representative as possible. This leads us to the stricter and much more helpful
definition of a corpus as "a finite collection of machine-readable texts,
sampled to be maximally representative of a language or variety" (McEnery &
Wilson, 2001, p. 197).

Types of corpora

Corpora come in many shapes and sizes, because they are built to serve
different purposes. [3] There are two
philosophies behind their design, leading to the distinction between
reference and monitor corpora. Reference corpora have a fixed
size; that is, they are not expandable (e.g., the British National Corpus),
whereas monitor corpora are expandable; that is, texts are continuously being
added (e.g., the Bank of English). Another design-related distinction is whether
a corpus contains whole texts, or merely samples of a specified
length. The latter option allows a greater variety of texts to be included in a
corpus of a given size.

In terms of content, corpora can be either general, that is, attempt
to reflect a specific language or variety in all its contexts of use (e.g., the
American National Corpus), or specialised, that is, aim to focus on
specific contexts and users (e.g., Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English),
and they can contain written or spoken language. Corpora can also
represent the different varieties of a single language. For example, the
International Corpus of English (ICE) contains one-million-word corpora
representative of different varieties of English (British, Indian, Singaporean,
etc.). As implied in the previous section, corpora may contain language produced
by native or non-native speakers (usually learners). Finally,
corpora can be monolingual (i.e., contain samples of only one language),
or multilingual. Multilingual corpora are of two types: they can contain
the same text-types in different languages, or they can contain the
same texts translated into different languages, in which case they
are also known as parallel corpora (Hunston, 2002; Kennedy, 1998; McEnery
& Wilson, 2001; Meyer, 2002). [-3-]

Creating a useful corpus

First, the texts a corpus is to contain are selected and stored in electronic
format. Written texts, if they are not already in electronic form (e.g.,
downloaded from the Internet, submitted by learners on a disc or CD-ROM, or sent
by e-mail), must be scanned; spoken texts must be recorded and transcribed. [4] The
result of this stage is a raw corpus. Although a raw corpus can yield
some information about language use, its usefulness is limited. For example,
although the frequency of the word drive in the raw corpus can be
determined, we will not know how many times it occurs as a noun and how many as
a verb. Of course, different instances could be counted manually, but this would
defy the purpose of compiling a corpus.

The utility and flexibility of a corpus can be increased by adding coding
that a computer can recognise. Labels (or tags) are attached to the
words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, sections, or to entire texts in the
corpus. Information related to non-linguistic properties of the texts is
referred to as mark-up. Mark-up may give information about the source of
the text (e.g., book, newspaper), the date of publication or broadcast, the
author or participants, or text sections (e.g., introduction, conclusion).
Information related to the linguistic properties of the texts in the corpus is
called annotation. Most L1 corpora are annotated for the part of speech
and form of the words (e.g., singular/plural, present/past tense). This type of
annotation is also called grammatical annotation, or tagging. For
example, the word teaching would be tagged 'teaching_VVI' if it was a
present participle (as in 'she was teaching'), and 'teaching_NN1' if it was used
as a noun (as in 'language teaching'). Corpora can also be annotated for lexical
sense (e.g., lexis denoting belief, expectation) and pragmatic function (e.g.,
request, invitation). [5] What kind of mark-up or
annotation is added to a corpus is determined by the information to be
extracted. Sample 1 shows the three questions asked in the second paragraph of
this article, annotated for part of speech. [6]

What_DDQ is_VBZ a_AT1 corpus_NN1 ?_?

How_RRQ are_VBR corpora_NN2 relevant_JJ to_II language_NN1
teaching_NN1 ?_?

How_RRQ can_VM they_PPHS2 be_VBI used_VVN
?_?

Sample 1. Example of annotation for parts of speech

How are corpora relevant to language teaching?

Corpus use contributes to language teaching in a number of ways (Aston, 2000;
Leech, 1997; Nesselhauf, 2004). The insights derived from native-speaker corpora
contribute to a more accurate language description, which then feeds into the
compilation of pedagogical grammars and dictionaries (Hunston & Francis,
1998, 1999; Kennedy, 1992; Meyer, 1991; Owen, 1993). The analysis of learner
language provides insights into learner needs in different contexts, which then
inform learner dictionaries and grammars. Research on learner corpora also
contributes to our understanding of language learning processes (Granger et al.,
2002). Corpora of language teaching coursebooks enable the examination of the
language to which learners are exposed, and, when compared to L1 corpora,
facilitate the development of more effective pedagogical materials. Learner
corpora have the potential to contribute to the construction and evaluation of
language tests in a multitude of ways (see Alderson, 1996); however, this
potential has remained underexploited (but see Ball, 2001; Barker 2004).
Finally, both native-speaker and learner corpora can themselves be used as
learning/teaching materials (Aston, 1997; Aston et al., 2004; Johns, 1991a;
Kettemann, 1995). Figure 1 summarises the interconnecting ways in which corpora
are relevant to language teaching (adapted from McEnery & Gabrielatos, 2005,
forthcoming). [-4-]

Figure 1. Corpora and ELT

We will now turn to the contribution of corpora to language teaching in more
detail.

Language description

The use of L1 corpora in linguistic research has provided the most convincing
evidence of discrepancies between actual use and traditional,
introspection-based views on language (Sinclair, 1997, pp. 32-34), and has
revealed patterns that had not been detected by introspection. This is pertinent
to language teaching, as the information about language structure and use that
learners receive, whether through pedagogical materials or teachers, is still
largely based on introspection.

Helpful as it may be, introspection is not always reliable. Being a native
speaker does not automatically mean that a user has a conscious, clear, and
comprehensive picture of the language in all its contexts of use, nor do all
native speakers share the exact same intuitions. A good example is the claim by
a native-speaker teacher that in English, "question tags, along with bowler
hats, mostly belong to 1960s BBC broadcasts" (Bradford, 2002, p. 13). This view
is contradicted by the findings of Biber et al. (1999, p. 211), based on the
examination of the 40-million-word Longman Spoken and Written English
Corpus, who report that "about every fourth question in conversation is a
question tag."

It is, of course, very helpful to examine the intuitions of native speakers
and elicit the different alternatives they find acceptable, or can generate by
manipulating their language. It is equally helpful, however, to examine which of
these alternatives native speakers actually use, and in what contexts and
frequency. The discrepancy between intuitions and attested use indicates that
when the language information learners are given is based only on intuitions,
and when the examples and texts used in class are chosen to reflect these
intuitions, then teachers and materials writers may unwittingly present their
personal informal observations about language as the true and full picture of
language structure and use, or present their own preferred usage as the only
'correct' or 'acceptable' one. The importance of corpus-informed pedagogical
materials becomes more evident if we take into account that "to a great extent,
the course-book can be considered to be the learners' 'corpus'" (Gabrielatos,
1994a, p. 14). [-5-]

Corpus-based research has also revealed the inadequacy of many of the rules
that still dominate ELT materials. For example, in a study of a random sample of
710 if-conditionals [7] from the written section
of the BNC, the conditional sentences were examined against the information
about form, time orientation and attitude to likelihood given within the
currently favoured framework of five types (zero, first, second, third and
mixed). The rules presented in fifteen recent intermediate-to-advanced
coursebooks, taken collectively, accounted for only 44% of the sentences
(Gabrielatos, 2003b). [8]

This section has highlighted the first important contribution of corpus-based
research to language teaching, namely more accurate descriptions of English,
which in turn can inform reference books and pedagogical materials (Hahn, 2000;
Mindt, 1997). The language insights derived from corpora go beyond questions of
correct or natural use, and provide additional details about the frequency of
particular language features in specific contexts.

Examining learner language

Strange as it may sound, every single teacher has used a learner corpus, in
the loose definition, if only in an informal and intuitive way. Teachers
routinely write end-of-course reports, or answer questions about a learner's
strengths and needs. How are they able to do so? To use corpus terminology, each
learner's performance during the course is used to compile what we may call a
mental corpus, which is consulted when evaluating a learner. The same
applies when assigning an impression mark to a piece of writing or a task
performance. Using language corpora allows teachers to be much more precise in
examining learner language and identifying needs than just forming an overall
impression, because corpus use enables teachers to examine particular areas in
detail, or annotate for specific learner errors (Granger, 1999).

In general, studies on learner language focus on the over/under use of
specific features in different contexts in comparison to native-speaker use, and
the analysis and categorisation of learner errors. Error analysis may deal with
frequent or common errors, or error patterns, according to the learners' L1,
level and age, the medium of production (speech or writing), or the context of
use (e.g., homework, test), while taking into account factors such as task and
text type. Studies using learner corpora have focused on diverse aspects of
learner language, mainly in writing. Examples of areas that have been examined
with the help of language corpora are the use of lexical chunks (De Cock et al.,
1998), collocations (Nesselhauf, 2005), complement clauses (Biber & Reppen,
1998), the progressive and questions (Virtanen, 1997, 1998), overstatement
(Lorenz, 1998), connectors (Altenberg & Tapper, 1998), speech-like elements
in writing (Granger & Rayson, 1998), and epistemic modality (McEnery &
Kifle, 2002).

One area of language teaching which has interested corpus researchers is
English for Specific/Special Purposes (ESP), especially English for Academic
Purposes (EAP). [9] The areas that have most
attracted corpus-based research are those of scientific and academic writing,
often with a view to the implications for teaching (Coxhead, 2002; Flowerdew,
2002). In scientific/academic writing, the term 'learner' can be interpreted in
two ways: a learner of the language system as a whole, or a learner of the style
and conventions of academic writing. It is interesting that the latter applies
to non-native speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS) alike, in that both groups
are, in several respects, approached as "trainee academics," the writing of
which is "compared to that of established writers as evidenced in the discourse
of published papers" (Gabrielatos & McEnery, 2005, in press, p. 312). The
blurring of the NS-NNS distinction, as far as academic writing is concerned, is
better understood if we consider that NNS who have published academic/scientific
papers must be considered as "established writers" (Gabrielatos & McEnery,
2005, in press, p. 312; see also Lucas et al., 2003). Studies on academic and
scientific writing have focused on language features, such as directives
(Hyland, 2002), modality (Hyland & Milton, 1997; Thompson, 2002), or
collocations (Gledhill, 2000; Luzon Marco, 2000), as well as the conventions of
academic writing, such as citation practices (Harwood, 2004; Hyland, 1999;
Thompson & Tribble, 2001). Finally, corpora can be used to detect plagiarism
in student essays (Atwell et al., 2003; Lyon et al., 2004; van Halteren, 2003).
[10]
[-6-]

The contribution of such studies is two-fold. By examining learner language,
we can define areas that need special attention in specific contexts and at
different levels of competence, and so devise syllabi and materials. The
analysis of learner language can also provide insights into the process of
language learning (Bekiou & Diaz, 2004; Tono, 2000).

Corpora, language exposure, intuitions and generalisations

A corpus in the mind?

Intuition, or 'a feel for the language,' is what learners aim to develop.
Native speakers develop that 'feel' partly through exposure to language in use
and the recognition of patterns. Through this exposure, native speakers build
the mental equivalent of a corpus (Bod, 1998). Intuitions can be seen as the
results of the informal analysis of this mental corpus. It follows then,
that by working on representative examples from language corpora, learners will
be helped to recognise recurring patterns of structure and meaning. As Stern
states, language learners need to be helped "to see a particular feature ... not
merely as an isolated item but as part of an evolving system of
interrelationships which should become increasingly differentiated as it grows"
(1992, p. 145). The wealth of instances of use of a specific item that corpora
provide can offer the amount of evidence required for learners to refine their
perception of it.

Pattern recognition, generalisations and rules

This section will first use a visual example to illustrate how pattern
recognition works, and then discuss the implications for language teaching and
the use of corpora, with particular regard to the formulation of pedagogical
rules. We will assume that the images used in this example represent a specific
language feature, such as the use of a grammatical structure, or the
collocational behaviour of a word. We will also assume that we wish to establish
the behaviour of the feature by examining a small number of language examples.
On the strength of the analysis of this sample, we recognise a regular pattern
(Figure 2).

Figure 2.

In traditional language teaching fashion, we could formulate a rule. However,
it might be that when more examples are added to the sample, some irregularities
emerge (Figure 3a).

Figure 3a.

In the light of the new evidence, we could formulate a list of exceptions to
our rule (Figure 3b).

Figure 3b.[-7-]

Let us assume that, over time, we come to observe more instances of the
language item in question, or, in corpus terms, that we examine a larger sample,
and that our observations reveal even more irregularities to the initial
pattern, or, in language teaching terms, more exceptions to the rule (Figure
4).

Figure 4.

On the face of the evidence at this point, two alternatives exist: First, we
can conclude that the particular language feature is "illogical," and that even
if a rule could be formulated, it would inevitably have a disproportionate
number of exceptions. Second, we could become suspicious of the fact that the
exceptions cover more instances than the rule, and tentatively conclude that the
fault lies with the rule, not the language. We could then hypothesise that what
we have observed is only a part of a different pattern from that was initially
perceived--a pattern that may be larger and more complex. If we adopt the second
alternative, the next logical step is to further increase the size of the sample
(Figure 5).

Figure 5.

The larger sample seems to reveal a new pattern. However, in the light of
previous experience, this time we are not so quick to draw conclusions or
formulate rules. Since the larger the sample, the more valid the conclusions, we
considerably increase the sample size to test our new hypothesis (Figure 6).
[-8-]

Figure 6.

Observing the pattern repeat itself (Figure 6), we are now in a much better
position to formulate dependable generalisations about the language item in
question. However, caution is needed regarding how these generalisations are
delimited and phrased (c.f. Close, 1992, pp. 2-11; Leech, 1994; Swan, 1994;
Westney, 1994). [11] The delimitation of
generalisations relates to a number of important parameters that must be
considered: [-9-]

The medium; that is, whether the sample contains only speech or
only writing, or both.

The context of use, that is, "the physical, social and
psychological background in which language is used" (Gabrielatos, 1999, p.
15). The main contextual elements are the topic, the writer's or speaker's
purpose, the type of text or interaction, the audience or participants and
their relationship.

The co-text, that is, the surrounding text or linguistic
neighbourhood of the feature, as words and structures seem to both attract,
and interact with, one another.

The representativeness of the sample; in other words, the
collection of texts needs to represent a microcosm of the language use of the
population under investigation.

The size of the sample; as the example demonstrated, language
patterns may be too large and complex for a small sample to reveal adequately.

It would be rash to make broad statements about the behaviour of a language
feature without reference to these parameters. As far as language teaching is
concerned, exceptions and special cases are usually the result of
overgeneralisations that do no take into account the parameters outlined above,
or rules formulated on the basis of inadequate or selective evidence.

Corpora and condensed language exposure

Language learners in countries where the target language is not widely spoken
often lack opportunities for the rich language exposure that is essential for
developing the ability to recognise patterns. Extensive reading (Nation, 1997;
Susser & Robb, 1990) is believed to facilitate language learning, because it
exposes learners to real language use in context, and in amounts far larger than
the short texts and dialogues usually preferred for the presentation of new
language items. Extensive reading is also regarded as an effective way to help
language learners develop intuitions as native speakers do (Krashen, 2004). The
pattern-recognition example in the previous section gives an indication of how
focused language exposure can be used actively, in order to formulate intuitions
about language use.

Representative corpora can offer condensed exposure to language patterns. It
is not argued here that corpora should be the sole vehicle for the development
of reading skills and strategies, [12] nor is it argued that
corpus use can replace out-of-class reading. Rather, what is being suggested is
an approach that shares characteristics of both intensive and extensive
reading--what might be called condensed reading. The reading of corpus
samples is intensive in the sense that learners focus on the behaviour of
specific language features; it is extensive in the sense that learners examine
language features in a larger number of texts than in conventional text-based
techniques. Condensed reading enables learners to engage with language use in
context in order to formulate and check, though not necessarily consciously,
hypotheses about language structure and use.

One printed page contains 500 words on average. [13] The British National
Corpus contains 90 million written words, or the equivalent of approximately
180,000 pages. A six-year language teaching programme of five one-hour lessons
per week amounts to a total of about 1,000 lessons. To gain exposure through
reading to the amount of language evidence contained in a 90 million word
corpus, a learner would need to examine about 180 pages per lesson (in the case
of classroom or intensive reading), or read about 80 pages every day of the year
for six years (in the case of out-of-class or extensive reading), the equivalent
of two to three books per week.

Through corpora, learners will experience types of texts that they may not
choose to read out of class, or that teachers and materials writers may not deem
appropriate. It seems clear, then, that learners may benefit from using corpora
in addition to pedagogical materials and authentic texts. [14] The considerations
listed here also highlight the limitations of pedagogies that avoid the use of
materials and a pre-planned focus on language, such as the ELT translation of
Dogme (Thornbury, 2000). These approaches tend to favour class discussions
loosely structured around topics, with the teacher and learners acting as the
main, or even sole, sources of language exposure. In doing so, they offer
limited exposure to language, which is usually further restricted to the
teacher's language variety and preferred usage. [-10-]

Corpora in the classroom

Before examining ways in which corpora can be used as (sources of) classroom
materials, we need to clarify that a data-driven, awareness-raising approach is
not necessarily linked to the use of corpora. Teachers can use texts containing
the target language features and, through awareness-raising tasks, guide
learners to discover the behaviour of lexical, grammatical or discourse
elements. Therefore, it would be helpful to distinguish between
text-based and corpus-based approaches to data-driven learning. [15]

Corpora can be used in language teaching in two ways (Leech, 1997, p. 10):
The soft version, requires only the teacher to have access to, and the
skills to use, a corpus and the relevant software. The teacher prints out
examples from the corpus and devises the tasks. Learners work with these
corpus-derived and corpus-based materials (Bernardini, 2004; Granger &
Tribble, 1998; Osbourne, 2000; Tribble, 1997b; Tribble & Jones, 1990).
Usually corpus examples are in the form of a concordance, where the word
or structure being examined in the task is in the middle, so that patterns are
more easily discernible (see Sample 2). The hard version, requires
learners to have direct access to computer and corpus facilities and have the
skills to use them (Aston, 1996). Tasks can be devised by the teacher
(Tognini-Bonelli, 2001), contained within a CALL programme (Hughes, 1997;
Milton, 1998), or chosen by the learners, with or without the teacher's guidance
(Bernardini, 2002).

Taking into consideration the aims of a lesson, the design or selection of
materials and the management of learning, in relation to teachers and learners,
we can define combinations that cover the spectrum from totally teacher-centred
to totally learner-centred. At the teacher-centred end, the teacher decides on
the aims of the lesson, selects/designs the materials and manages the lesson. At
the learner-centred end, the learner decides on all three, with the teacher or
computer programme acting as facilitator and guide. Of course, there can be
intermediate combinations, particularly when decisions are taken collaboratively
between teacher and learners.

Soft version: Four examples

Example 1. Comparing text-based and corpus-based approaches to teaching
collocations

This example shows how a text-based data-driven approach could be used to
teach collocations of the noun diet to a group of intermediate-level
learners. Because class time is limited, a long text or a small number of short
texts could be used. Also, it would be wise to focus on a specific collocation
pattern--only collocations of the noun diet in the singular with verbs,
phrasal verbs, or expressions containing verbs, for example.

When selecting suitable texts, it becomes clear that it is difficult to find
authentic texts which are 'about diet,' as they have not been written for
language teaching purposes. The three texts chosen for this example [16]
gave advice on dieting or reported on dieting experience. Although the texts are
long for a typical 60/90-minute lesson (they total 2,250 words), they contained
only 12 instances of the noun diet, and only 5 collocations with verbs, 2
of which were with the same phrasal verb (Sample 2). [17]

1

'I went on a very drastic detox

diet

last year, and it didn't work - I

2

heart disease are from unhealthy

diet

- cardiac experts are keen to stre

3

diet

Guidelines Aimed at Healthy People

4

ent's suggestion they direct their

diet

advice to overweight Americans.

5

people, you begrudgingly go on a

"diet ."

Your initial concept of a

6

"Your initial concept of a

diet

is more commonly known as STARVATION

7

vicious cycle as you went from one

diet

to the next. Every new

8

Every new

diet

started with hope and promise, and

9

y thinking, "Oh great, another fad

diet

with a catchy name and empty promi

10

NO! The Eat and Burn

diet

identifies over 100 foods that tur

11

The Eat & Burn

diet

is easy to follow. You don't feel

12

concept behind The Eat and Burn

diet

is this: eat foods that safely forc

Sample 2. Concordance of the noun diet in the three
texts
[-11-]

It does not seem worthwhile to spend the time it takes learners to read more
than 2,000 words to teach only four collocations, particularly if it is
uncertain whether these are among the most frequent ones.

This example illustrates a problem with text-based approaches: authentic
texts do not conveniently contain enough instances of the patterns or structures
on which teachers may want to focus. Additionally, a given text cannot be
expected to necessarily contain the most frequent patterns, or to contain them
in proportions that reflect their overall frequency in language use. Until
recently, the only solution to this problem was to write texts specifically for
pedagogical use, so that a sufficient number of instances of the target language
features could be included. However, such texts tend to contain the target
language features in unnatural proportions. It could be argued that if the
frequency of the target features in pedagogical texts reflected actual use, that
is, if the content of the texts was informed by corpus data, then these texts
would be good teaching tools. Unfortunately, this is not the case. As the
example above indicates, it is unlikely that every single text will reflect the
overall frequency of a word, pattern or structure. Consequently, these putative
corpus-informed pedagogical texts would be too densely, and so, unnaturally,
packed with particular features. The process of incorporating an unnatural
number of specific language items into the texts affects other elements of
discourse. The result is a text that is as inauthentic as the traditional
pedagogical texts and dialogues.

The same collocation pattern could be approached using a concordance from the
BNC. One advantage of using a corpus is that the frequency of patterns can be
expected to reflect real language use. Another benefit is that more detailed
patterns can be investigated. For instance, learners may be presented with two
sets of examples to examine: one with the pattern 'verb + preposition + any word
+ diet', and one with 'verb + article + diet' (Samples 3 and 4
respectively). [18]

try other foods, although I advise against a

diet

of all dried food.

might have had recently could be affected by your

diet

, or alcohol and cigarette consumption.

or whatever--of British women are on a

diet

at any one time, but that, as a nation

was breast-feeding, her doctor asked about her

diet

and found that she was a vegetarian. She

margarines, and are best avoided on this

diet

programme.

've been up when I've been on a

diet

, I mean smelling, smoked out, smoked out on

the end. When he had been on this

diet

for ten days he was tested with various foods.

her child demands breastfeeding despite being on a

diet

of solids. Concerns about dehydration if the child

feels it will be able to cook with a

diet

sweetener."

commune in Vancouver, Canada and fed on a

diet

of black pudding and Ecstasy. If I were to

legumes, meat hardly ever figuring in their

diet

. On as little as 8/6d (42 new pence

testing. He gradually forgets about the

diet

. This pitfall can be avoided by ensuring that

with the new knowledge I had gained about my

diet

I was eating sensibly, I no longer crave sweet foods

last saw you. You should go on a

diet

. Exercise more. Edouard rides every morning

the purpose of its use (to go on a

diet

, or to exclude certain elements such as meat)?

"I can go on a

diet

when I grow up," I said, but I was

scale is the seasonal dieter who goes on a

diet

in spring to get rid of the Christmas over-indulgence;

After going on the

diet

ask yourself these questions again--you may be

our current eating habits and including in our

diet

the necessary changes that are required to maintain a

You can help by getting involved in her

diet

, preparing healthy, balanced meals and emphasising that

unlikely that you are going to keep to the

diet

for very long. However, here is the vital

More people are killed by poor

diet

than by smoking, alcohol, drugs, accidents and

. The opposition can no longer live on a

diet

of anti-Thatcherism. They face a prime minister,

daren't eat chewing gum if I'm on a

diet

Oh you don't need to

be suspect and was temporarily omitted from the

diet

. The patient returned to eating only foods that

for salt becomes less as you progress through the

diet

programme.

. Arthritic working-class guys raised on a

diet

of fish and chips and fags; they died of

If you're on a

diet

and you've found that you've hit problems, ring

She's erm, she's on a

diet

. Oh really? She's lost

That's why she's on a

diet

! Cos she doesn't

enjoyed it. It didn't seem like a

diet

--in fact, if there was one sentence that

enough how important it is to set aside from your

diet

foods you suspect or know cause you problems.

The more you are able to stick to a

diet

of natural foods--fruit and vegetables (raw if

will have heard that if you do stick _VVI to a

diet

and lose weight, then your metabolism will drop so

was losing her will power to stick _VVI to her

diet

. Anne had already trimmed down to a reasonable

metabolic rate. Providing you stick _VVB to your

diet

, and don't consume lost of extra calories,

be so easy that you can stick with the

diet

until all the weight is off.

Stage II must immediately be struck out of your

diet

. This is very important. Failure to

to the calorie-counting method, supervised by a

diet

club, dietitian, or doctor.

, it dwelt in woods, surviving on a

diet

of maize, fruit and grass. The north American

experiment in which a doctor switched to a

diet

including the average adult consumption of the country's

it's fat, and you should think about a

diet

. But don't be bullied by precise,

like your neighbour's before he went on that

diet

.

Sample 3. verb + preposition + any word + diet ( concordance view )

[-12-]

Therefore, adapt the diet
according to your lifestyle, to your personal diet.

Altering the diet is also
far more risky for a child than it is for an adult, so there are more
difficult decisions to be made before embarking on an elimination diet.

Wholegrain cereals are also good for the same reasons, and protein
foods(meat, fish, eggs and cheese) taken in moderation help to
balance the diet and give all
the necessary nutrients.

Even before you begin the diet
, notice how fast you eat, and slow down.

You need to consider those antecedent events that prompt you to
break a diet , and then think
about which of these things you can avoid or change in some way.

The final events that lead our dieter to break the
diet are quite concrete, namely, walking into a
café, seeing and smelling the pastries, and seeing other people happily
enjoying them.

I could manage to lose five or six pounds and then I would
break the diet , go back to
normal food and put all the weight back on again.

Unfortunately the punishment for breaking a
diet is also in-built; you put weight back on.

What if I get a reaction to a particular food after I have
completed the diet ?

Treatment was not merely a matter of prescribing herbal medicines,
but a whole regimen which controlled the
diet and the life-style.

Maybe it is due to my always having eaten a
diet rich in red meat and saturated animal fats?

In addition, oily fish is a rich source of the Omega-3 fatty acids
and recent medical research suggests that there are a number of health
benefits to be gained from eating a diet
rich in these fatty acids.

During the final two-week period you will be eating
a diet composed of the foods you have
selected through trial and error in the preceding four weeks.

Once you have established a diet
on which the child remains well, be careful not to allow too
much of any one food.

But, as RICHARD BATH discovers, England's appointment of coach DICK
BEST for less than a year means that, instead of a bright new era, we
can expect a diet of pragmatism
and playing the percentages.

For example, it can be argued the expansion into amalgamated police
units has enlarged the organization to a point where it is no longer
accessible to the man in the street; alternatively, it may be that the
use of a centralized computer and complex technical aids has alienated
the public even at the same time they are increasingly fed
a diet of violent news snippets which
reinforce a fear of crime and generate another "folk devil" of criminal
menace, which demands the impossible: a policeman on every corner.

In contrast, those abroad, notably in the West, who were fed
the diet of stage-managed events, found
his assassination both momentous and incomprehensible.

Feed a diet of insects,
worms, plant matter, flake food and freeze dried food.

What we are going to do is find a
diet that not only helps you to achieve
effective weight loss, but is really healthy, suits your individual
needs, and can be followed for years to come in order to maintain the
weight and shape you want.

Therefore when you finish a diet
, returning to eating an average amount, the amount you used to
eat to maintain a constant weight, will result in you putting on fat.

But I doubt very much whether there are any claims now outstanding
which are not statute-barred, in respect of children stillborn before 22
July 1976 or any children born before that date, who are locked in
litigation with their mothers over whether the mother tasted alcohol or
followed a diet other than that
recommended by the current phase of medical opinion during pregnancy.

Nevertheless, I now had 120 people, 116 women and 4 men, who had
followed the diet for a full
eight-week period.

I could fill a book with the other similar comments which were
written on the questionnaires but I think we can take it as read that
the trials proved beyond doubt that if you followed the
diet moderately strictly you could definitely
lose inches from parts usually untouched by normal dieting methods.

You will essentially be following the
diet in Stage I, but adding to it any food or
drink you now have listed in column 3 of the Grand Review Chart on page
228.

So I thought, "I'll invent a diet
where you feel good and you can eat."

You may prefer to keep the diet
simple during your working week and to save the more elaborate
meal for the weekends of, if you feel really adventurous, for dinner
parties.

Unless you absolutely hate cooking, or are just too busy, it is
preferable that you experiment with some of the recipes in order to
keep the diet interesting.

Unless you absolutely hat cooking it is advisable to experiment with
some of the recipes in order to keep the
diet interesting.

The answer, therefore, is to maintain a
diet which is as balanced and healthy as
possible.

Ethnic minorities will have the right to obtain the
diet required by their religious beliefs.

I remain nervously aboard, to hear doctors exchanging advice on
every deck: Doctor McRae recommends a
diet of rice and yoghurt.

For example, the origin of ivory can be identified by its strontium
isotopic composition, which reflects the
diet of the elephant.

In no circumstances should you do this without help and advice from
your doctor--restricting the diet
of small children can be very dangerous.

Some years ago Maisie had swallowed a whole bottle of vitamin pills
and, although Henry had suggested that in his view Maisie's stomach
could probably have stood a
diet of broken glass, aspirin and raw steak,
Elinor had insisted on ringing Charing Cross Hospital.

Just having a little treat here or there can add up to enough to
stop the diet from working.

The choice of diet--Two dietary factors--supplementing
the diet with wheat bran and reducing
the intake of refined carbohydrates--reduce cholesterol saturation of
bile in subjects with supersaturated bile.

Robin-Anne nodded, but was too busy eating to take much notice of
her brother, though she did manage to mumble that she thought
the diet soda was really kind of good.

A software engineer who freely admits to being plump and has
tried every diet in the book
claims to have invented a programme that's guaranteed to keep those
extra pounds off.

Some of Dr Gerson's patients--including those with TB--tried
the diet.

My exercise class students witnessed the low fat diet's remarkable
effect on my body (I had lost only 6lbs [2.7kg] but all from my problem
areas) and then they tried the
diet with similar benefits.

Gerald was asked to try a
diet containing no sugar or white flour and was
given an anti-fungal drug, Nystatin.

In his forties it grew worse and he decided to see a specialist When
Alan mentioned that he had taken a lot of antibiotics just before the
urticaria began, the specialist suggested that he try a
diet with no sugar and very little starch.

You are welcome to vary the
diet, but do make sure you eat other foods
besides chocolate this week!

Sample 4. VERB + ARTICLE + diet (sentence view)
[-13-]

Another important benefit of corpus use becomes apparent if we compare the
number of different collocational patterns contained in the texts and corpus
samples [19] in the example (Table
2).

No. of words

No. of patterns

Texts

2,250

5

Corpus samples

2,000

59

Table 2. Comparison between texts and concordances

Although the texts and corpus samples have roughly the same number of words,
the corpus samples contain twelve times the number of patterns. As mentioned
above, pedagogical texts tend to contain an unnatural density of the target
language features. The use of corpus samples achieves the same density, but
without compromising natural use. The richness of the corpus samples makes it
possible to devise tasks that cover a wide range of features. For example
learners can be given the following task:

Find verbs, phrasal verbs, or expressions containing verbs that combine
with the noun diet.

Does diet have the same meaning in every sentence?

Which combinations seem to be more frequent with each meaning?

Find combinations with similar/opposite meaning.

Try to group the patterns in some way.

This task focuses on collocation patterns, lexical meaning and frequency of
occurrence. It also involves some form of practice, or "mental
contextualisation" (McCarthy, 1990, p. 36), as learners are asked to group the
patterns in a meaningful way.

Example 2. Lexical inference

Corpus samples also lend themselves to work on reading skills, and, in
particular, to developing strategies for inferring the meaning of unknown lexis
in the text. Although it is, of course, possible to use one or more texts to
train learners in this enabling skill, corpus samples are superior in a number
of ways. A text will contain only a few instances of the lexical item, will
usually demonstrate its meaning and use in one context, and may not provide
sufficient clues for inferring meaning. Corpus samples, on the other hand,
contain a large number of examples which demonstrate meaning and use in diverse
contexts and offer a wealth of clues. Consider the following sample task (based
on Sample 5 below):

In the following examples the same word is missing in each case.

Work out the meaning of the missing word.

Decide if the word has exactly the same meaning in all the sentences.

If there are different meanings, check whether, and how, they are related.

If there are different meanings, check whether there are specific words or
expressions that are associated with each meaning. [-14-]

The winners of Black & Decker 9032 cordless
???????? action drills which were the prizes in
a competition which appeared in the May issue of DIY are as follows:

It was a "maniacal" beating around the head with a claw
????????.

Endill watched Tock make a hole in the wall, holding his
???????? with both hands to stop it banging in
the wrong place.

He had a ???????? and banged it against the
walls to restore order but nobody took any notice of him.

It was taken out of the context of the early punks and placed
alongside the ???????? and sickle, the IRA and
PLO slogans and any other symbols which could be guaranteed to raise the
hackles and the eyebrows of the BOF's (remember them?).

The problem could just be confined to this guitar and removing the
strings and lightly tapping the frets down with a block of wood and a
small ???????? could well fix it.

Author Ian Fleming's original unpublished notes on his most famous
creation are to go under the ???????? at London
auctioneers Sotheby's on December 15.

There are several ways in which you can do this--I use a
professional glazier's staple gun which is both quick and efficient, but
if you find this too expensive an investment when you first begin
pressed flower work you can use a ???????? and
nails instead.

These mechanisms enable a stressed metal to be rapidly filled with
dislocations (something like 10 per square centimetre) and thus to flow
under a steady load or the blow of a ????????
quite easily.

Next Monday, Rod's prize goes under the
???????? through ADT, the world's biggest
car-auction firm at Blackbushe, Hants.

Family's ???????? revenge on love cheat
soccer ace

Chief union negotiator John Allen said it was another
"???????? blow" for the industry.

But I must have felt the need for some support, because I found I'd
grabbed hold of one of my ???????? s--a geologist is
always armed with a ????????--and when I got
through to the back of the house he was there already, at the kitchen
window."

Its plastic jacket bore a gold ???????? and
sickle.

Jaq rifled through the pack to find the card he used to signify
himself; the black-robed High Priest, enthroned, gesturing with a
????????.

The appellant, having discovered that the man had a number of
previous convictions for similar offences, equipped himself with a
???????? and a quantity of weak sulphuric acid
and sought out the man at his place of work on two occasions.

Using a small ???????? the needles were then
tapped through these holes and then cut off flush with the exterior of
the pipe.

"Distractedly, he began to change ????????,
pouch, pipe and matches from hand to hand, dropping them and picking
them up, before finally deciding to put the
???????? down and stuff the rest into his
pockets.

She had laid the ???????? there, after she
had tried to break the tower window.

The fist techniques of taekwondo involve lunge punches, reverse
punches, back fists and ???????? fists--all of
them similar to the basic karate punches described in the previous
chapter.

Sample 5. Lexical inference
[-15-]

Example 3. Revision and critical examination of grammar rules

Corpus samples can be used for revision, and offer an opportunity for
learners to formulate a second opinion on traditional ELT rules (see Leech,
1994). The following task focuses on if-conditionals and could be used
with upper-intermediate and advanced learners. Only a small, random corpus
sample is given here, which is too small to be representative. However, even in
such a small sample, the limitations of the five-types framework become
clear.

Check if all if-sentences are conditional sentences.

Do all conditional sentences express a cause-result relationship?

Allocate each conditional sentence to one of the types in your
course/grammar book. Do all sentences conform to the information/ rules in
your book?

In your groups, discuss any sentences that don't fit the rules and report
to the class.

Try to adapt the rules so that they fit more sentences, or decide on a
different way to group the sentences.

1. "My dear, dear fellow, if I had a lira for every time I've heard
that story ... well ... "

2. If meat was banned, for instance, this was because the animal too
has a soul (and may even be a dear departed relative!).

3. If Gunnell herself has cashed in, she's not been so blatant or
obviously motivated by the financial side as other athletes.

4. If ordinary children build their linguistic abilities on antecedent
social and cognitive abilities, these may, in fact, be necessary
prerequisites for the emergence of language.

5. Payment of fines; imprisonment; amputation of right hand (the left
hand is only amputated if the right has already been amputated)

6. The cold did little to hinder the Orcs, for Orcs and Goblins are
hardy creatures, and, if needs must, will eat any flesh no matter how foul
or what manner of creature it comes from.

7. If the lack of energy is not remedied, the excess stress on the body
can ultimately lead to prolonged illness and possible death.

8. If you pull it off, I get fifteen hundred.

9. We shall examine random additions to a file; as the principles
involved do not change if the additions are grouped or regular in pattern,
the methods used can be adapted to suit those cases.

10. Into the power-vacuum created by the slaying of Osric and Eanfrith
stepped Eanfrith's brother, Oswald, who slew Cadwallon in the battle of
"Heavenfield" near Hexham in the autumn of either 634 (if Eadwine was
killed in 633) or 635 (if Eadwine did not perish until 634), and assumed
the kingship of both the Deirans and the Bernicians.

11. This enforced poverty made them easier targets for propaganda: if
they left with no more than their allowance, they could be portrayed as
shabby Untermenschen scuttling away like rats; if they managed to outwit
the system, then they were economic criminals fleeing with stolen
goods.

12. A. If you are a tenant of a public landlord, such as a local
authority, new town or housing association, and if you have a pressing
need to move to another local authority area for a job or social reasons
(for example, because you are elderly or handicapped), you should ask your
landlord whether you can be nominated for a move under the National
Mobility Scheme.

13. "The facts speak for themselves; if Dana had any feelings for you
she'd have refused my offer.

14. If a factory chimney dumps smoke on a thousand gardens nearby it
may be very expensive to collect 1 from each household to bribe the
factory to cut back to the socially efficient amount.

15. If the sale is by sample as well as by description it is not
sufficient that the bulk of the goods corresponds with the sample if the
goods do not also correspond with the description.

16. They are people whom we rarely consider in this House, but when
there is a suicide or accident on the railway, the driver, and his mate if
appropriate, may be mentally scarred for life by the experience.

17. The Member of Parliament shall be eligible for nomination for
selection as the prospective parliamentary candidate and, whether
nominated or not, he or she shall be entitled to appear as if they had
been nominated before the special meeting of the General Committee
convened in accordance with section (3) of this clause and to be
considered for selection as the prospective parliamentary candidate.

18. Example 4:10 Tenant's power to make time of the essence (1) if the
landlord fails to take any step in the procedure for rent review within a
period of time prescribed by this lease (whether or not that step could
also have been taken by the tenant) the tenant may give the landlord
written notice.

19. It is perhaps as well to remember at the outset that the main
injury in this particular case was a hip injury which, if it had occurred
to a younger man, would have produced an arthrodesis operation.

20. "When I saw Ivo with a parcel he was about to mail to his wife's
cousin in Karlovy Vary, I told him I was driving that way, and that I'd
drop it into the shop where Edita's cousin works if he
wished."

Sample 6. If-sentences (random sample)
[-16-]

Example 4. Homework tasks with a multiple focus

The variety of information in corpus samples can provide material for
homework assignments. Learners can do the tasks outside of class so that
classroom time can be devoted to feedback discussion and perhaps some
fine-tuning by the teacher. For example, learners can be given corpus sentences
with the words sorrow and grief (samples 7 and 8) [20]
with a task that focuses on nuances of meaning, sense relations (synonymy and
antonymy) and collocation patterns:

Examine the sentences with sorrow and grief.

What causes sorrow or grief?

What other words/expressions with a similar or opposite meaning can you
find?

What verbs, adjectives and nouns seem to combine more often with the two
words?

Are there any frequent fixed expressions?

Devise a dictionary entry for each word.

Look up the words in dictionaries and compare your entry with the
information they give.

Fly over the solitary rock washed by the glacial tears of
sorrow, let there be at your passing, a radiant beam
over the gloomy solitary rock.

Among his sacred possessions were an enormous club which could raise
the slain to life again; a magic harp whose music made its listeners
forget sorrow; an inexhaustible cauldron from which
no-one is turned away hungry; and two marvellous sheep -- one eternally
roasting, the other forever feeding in readiness for slaughter.

God promises his people comfort and invites us not to live in
sorrow.

Dick expressed his great sorrow at the news of
LF363 and said that he had a very soft spot for it, having "cut his
teeth" on that Hurricane during his days with BBMF.

Another couple passed by giving them a wide and sympathetic berth,
leaving them alone in their sorrow.

GE NUP DIMU The sorrow that overtakes the child in
the womb when it knows it will be born dead

As I walked down by the riverside one evening in the spring Heard a
long gone song from days gone by Blown in on the great North wind Though
there is no lonesome corncrake's cry of sorrow and
delight You can hear the cars and the shouts from bars and the laughter,
and the fights May the ghosts that howled round the house at night never
keep you from your sleep May they all sleep tight down in Hell tonight
or wherever they may be ...

I do not need your understanding, or your damned
sorrow!

"Through the night of doubt and sorrow, Onward goes
the pilgrim band, Singing songs of expectation, Marching to the Promised
Land."

The letters were handwritten in strong block capitals, and he peered
at the sign for obvious traces of sorrow, such as
shakiness of the hand or tear stains, but there were none.

Sample 7. Sorrow (random sample)

They hold their feelings in, their grief , anger,
frustration and would rarely weep in front of others.

If, of course, her grief becomes prolonged and it
seems that she is making no headway towards adjustment, it will be
advisable for her to see her doctor, but this rarely happens.

There was movement that year among all the teams and Pace's death in
March not only upset Brabham plans but also caused Ecclestone, who was
very attached to Carlos, both as a man and as a driver, considerable
grief.

Short-sighted Mansell, 26, came to grief on the
hard shoulder of the M6 near Pontefract, West Yorks.

The second type had no power-had numbers, but no safety: numbers
conferred only grief and weakness.

Mom gave birth to a baby boy, and called him Winchell (not after the
doughnuts, though the association would later cause him grief
at school).

We pass, heads to the side, in deep grief for a
piece of shredded lorry tyre.

He also added that Moore had never asked them to forgive her for
throwing their lives into grief and chaos.

I was distracted with grief this time, torn by
guilt, and Eric had to look after me while I acted my part to
perfection, though I say it myself.

In her despair and grief Mrs McDermott also turned
to alcohol for relief.

Sample 8. Grief (random sample)
[-17-]

Soft version: Teacher manipulation of corpus examples

When using the soft version, teachers can manipulate the corpus examples in a
number of ways. They can restrict the examples to a specific medium
(writing/speech), and genre or text type (newspaper article, novel). They can
also decide on the amount of text to give learners--only a few words on either
side of the key word (as in Samples 2-3 above), an entire sentence (as in
Samples 4-8 above), or a paragraph. Finally, they can edit the samples to remove
sentences that they deem too difficult for the learners (Wible et al., 2002).
This manipulation should be carried out with the understanding that the adapted
samples are not good guides to the frequency of a language item.

We will take the pattern 'verb + article + diet' as an example. There
are 3,458 instances of diet as a noun in the BNC, and 177 instances of
the pattern. Since there would probably not be enough classroom time for
learners to examine so many examples, the sample must be reduced (Sample 4 above
contains 43 examples). If, for the sake of convenience, the first 43 examples
from the original 177 were selected, the sample would not be representative,
since the collocates are in alphabetical order. Instead, the collocations were
extracted from a random sample of 1,000 sentences out of the total of 3,458. In
this way, the 43 examples in Sample 4 give a much more accurate picture of the
pattern. (However, the sample is too small to give a truly representative
picture.) Also, in order to save time and keep a clear focus, instances of
diet with the meaning 'assembly' were removed.

There are, of course, cases in which it is difficult to restrict the number
of examples without affecting the representativeness of the sample, for example,
when selecting examples for students of below-intermediate level. In this case,
the teacher has three options: simplify the examples, select suitable sentences
in a way that their make-up approximates the original sample, or avoid dealing
with issues of frequency. Nevertheless, the edited sample may still be expected
to contain at least some of the most frequent collocations.

Hard version: Learners using corpora

When learners have direct access to corpora, the focus of the lesson can be
made more flexible to reflect their interests and needs. In other words, the
teacher or learners have the option of modifying the aims and direction of the
lesson on the spot according to what emerges. In the case of the collocations of
diet, learners could also choose to examine other patterns, for example
collocations of the noun diet with adjectives, patterns of dieting
used as a noun, or diet as a verb. If the concordance or sentences do not
offer enough clues, learners can get more text just by clicking either on the
key word or a special button (depending on the software).

Corpora and ELT methodology

Although the use of corpora in language teaching has been linked to a
"data-driven" approach (Johns, 1991a), it would be a mistake to assume that
corpus use is restricted to any single teaching methodology. The use of corpora,
in both the soft and hard versions, and either in a classroom context or for
self-study, is compatible with all methodologies that accept explicit focus on
language structure and use; in other words, teaching frameworks that reserve a
role for noticing or awareness/consciousness-raising (e.g. Lightbown, 1985;
Schmidt, 1990; Sharwood Smith, 1981). [-18-]

Corpus examples can enhance frameworks involving explicit presentation of
language features, but they are particularly relevant to frameworks which depend
on the learners using their existing language knowledge to work out the meaning
and use of new elements (Rutherford & Sharwood-Smith, 1988), as has been
shown by a number of studies utilising corpora as sources of language data
(Aston, 1997; Granger & Tribble, 1998; Johns, 1997). Although it may not be
readily apparent, corpus use is also compatible with methodologies that advocate
exposure to language, or comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985), rather than
explicit focus on language, as was demonstrated above through the example of
condensed reading.

In other words, corpus use fits equally well within language-based
approaches, with the Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) framework as their
best known realisation (Read, 1985; Spratt, 1985), and task-based approaches
(Fotos & Ellis, 1991; Loschky & Bley-Vroman, 1993; Nunan, 1989; Skehan,
1998). In the case of a straightforward PPP lesson, corpus data can be used
instead of made-up examples in the Presentation stage. But a corpus can only be
utilised to the fullest if the PPP teaching framework has been modified and
expanded to incorporate awareness-raising (Gabrielatos, 1994b) or data-driven
procedures (Johns, 1997). Johns proposes a flexible sequence of Research,
Practice and Improvisation, as he sees the learner "as 'linguistic
researcher', testing and revising hypotheses, or as 'language detective',
learning to recognize and interpret clues from context" (1997, p. 101). In
formatted task-based frameworks, corpus data can be used in the "Pre-emptive
Work" stage (Skehan, 1993), or the "Pre-task" and "Post-task" phases (Willis,
1996), which involve input or consciousness-raising.

Corpus use can also enhance learner independence. According to Johns (1997,
p. 101), when using corpora or corpus-based materials, "students define their
own tasks as they start noticing features of the data for themselves--at times
features that had not previously been noticed by the teacher" (see also
Bernardini, 2002). Along the same lines, the use of corpora enhances the use of
the language lab, and suggests a more flexible and learner-centred use for CALL
materials (McEnery et al., 1997). This is not to say that the teacher's role is
diminished; rather, it is enriched and diversified. The teacher becomes less a
provider of input and facts about language and more a facilitator and
consultant, or, at the learner-centred end, a co-researcher.

Finally, having learners work with samples from representative corpora of
different varieties (e.g., British or American English) and different genres
(e.g., academic English, chatroom English) will give them the rich exposure they
need to become aware of the existence of varieties, not so much in order to
learn these varieties, but to understand that English is not monolithic.

Corpus use in learning and teaching: Prerequisites

The availability of corpora and corpus software alone cannot ensure that
language teaching will take full advantage of the opportunities they offer.
Language teaching institutions will have to take certain courses of action;
learners and teachers in their turn will have to adjust to changes in knowledge,
skills and roles. [-19-]

What is apparent is the necessity for investment in computers, access to
corpora, and the relevant software. This would be a costly move if a school were
to opt for the hard version, but the cost would be reduced considerably if the
soft version were adopted. In the first case there should be enough computers
for each learner in a group, or at least for every two to three learners. In the
second case, a school will only need enough computers for the teaching staff.
Investment in technology, however, is just the tip of the iceberg; it is the
investment in the users of corpora, the learners and teachers, that poses
the greatest challenge for language teaching (see Kennedy & Miceli,
2001).

Learners need to become familiar with corpora (Leech, 1997, p. 10), and in
the case of the hard version, they have to be trained to use corpus software
(Bernardini, 2002). They also have to be introduced to data-driven approaches to
learning, and guided to develop the skills that such approaches require. They
have to be guided away from the "single correct answer" concept, and the notion
of fixed rules and exceptions, towards the recognition of patterns and
alternatives, and the importance of context. The utility of corpus use does not
stop at helping learners discover language facts for themselves--when learners
(are guided to) examine corpus samples they also develop a crucial element of
learning skills (see Cohen, 2003; Oxford, 1994), namely the ability to recognise
patterns of language structure and use. To employ a popular analogy, in
consulting a dictionary or grammar learners are given fish; by actively engaging
in pattern recognition they learn how to fish.

Of course, teachers need to be informed about corpora and the relevant
software, and become skilled users (Renouf, 1997). This is not expected to take
place quickly, and may be met with reluctance, or even resistance, on the part
of teachers (Arkin, 2003). Teachers also need to be in a position to assist and
guide learners in their language investigations. This means that the teachers'
awareness and knowledge of language will have to extend beyond the information
in pedagogical materials (see Gabrielatos, 2002a, 2002b; Leech, 1994). Teacher
preparation programmes would not only have to add components related to corpora
and their uses, but also to place much greater emphasis on language awareness
and description (see Andrews, 1994; Sinclair, 1982).

Maintaining a sense of perspective

English language teaching is vulnerable to pendulum swings, and has a
propensity for the marketing and uncritical acceptance of "miracle methods" (see
Decoo, 2001; Gabrielatos, 2001, 2003a). As mentioned in the introduction, many
language teachers have little awareness of issues pertaining to corpora and the
analysis of naturally occurring data, and minimal, if any, familiarity with
corpus software tools. [-20-]

Corpus evidence has challenged the over-reliance on intuitions that
characterises much of language teaching. Shifting the focus on actual language
use is clearly a positive development. However, it is conceivable that the
language teaching pendulum may swing to the other extreme: an over-reliance on
corpus data. Such corpus worship could lead teachers and learners to
disregard the fact that, as large as corpora may be or may become in the future,
they cannot capture the entirety of language use because, by definition, they
are only samples (Gavioli, 1997, p. 85). It is also worth considering that
corpus studies depend on labelling and counting language elements or learner
errors, and that these labels themselves are informed by intuitions and
linguistic theories (Sinclair, 2004). A more sensible attitude towards
intuitions and corpora as sources of language insights would be neither that
intuitions are useless, nor that corpora are the ultimate solution. As Sinclair
(1991, p. 39) states, native-speaker introspections are useful "in evaluating
evidence rather than creating it." Therefore, intuitions should be balanced
against, and enriched by, the evidence of language in use that corpora provide
(see McEnery & Wilson, 2001, pp. 5-12). [21]

Corpus use, particularly in the form of concordances, is very well suited to
the teaching of lexis and, to a lesser extent, grammar. As corpora and relevant
software become more available, and corpus use becomes more widespread, language
teaching may well concentrate on lexical and grammatical patterns, at the
expense of discourse and interaction skills, that is, the teaching of reading,
listening, writing, and speaking skills and strategies. Similarly, since
corpus-based or corpus-derived materials are good vehicles for raising awareness
of language features, language production and interaction may be given less than
adequate attention. Differently stated, when working with corpora, learners
become observers of language use. This is necessary for language learning, but
not sufficient; learners also need to become participants in language use.

Corpus samples, and in particular random ones, may not be suitable to all
teaching contexts. Consequently, teachers and materials/software developers may
need to manipulate the samples given to learners, a process not without
pitfalls, particularly when the focus is on the frequency of language features.
For example, corpus samples may have to be adapted when used with low levels or
young learners, and when corpus examples contravene or offend sociocultural
norms and customs.

Corpora are also excellent sources of information about the frequency of
language features in different contexts. Although such information is
indispensable for syllabus design, it could also lead to a new kind of
prescription, what we might call frequency worship, that is,
concentrating on frequent items, patterns and structures at the expense of less
frequent or idiosyncratic uses. Such practice deprives learners of alternative
choices. Of course, it is not argued that learners should not be given frequency
information , or that they should not be guided to become aware of the fact that
some elements are more frequent than others, but that they should also be helped
to realise that 'less frequent' does not mean 'less acceptable', and that
'infrequent' does not mean 'wrong'. Similarly, learners should be made aware
that frequencies change according to context of use.

The following analogy may help put the issue of frequency into perspective.
Frequent items can be seen as the background, which is largely taken for
granted, while the infrequent or idiosyncratic features foreground the user's
personality. Frequent items, used appropriately, help users blend in with a
discourse community, whereas less frequent ones characterise individual language
users. In view of this, language learners do need to be familiar with frequent
features, which will enhance their understanding and production, but they should
not be deprived of exposure to less frequent features, which will enable them to
interpret nuances, enrich their own use, and help them express themselves in the
new language. [-21-]

It is important to remember that concordance programs work with corpora, and
that, consequently, the type and reliability of the derived information is
contingent on the corpus that is used. Similarly, corpora are, ideally,
representative samples of a language variety, a genre, or a medium (spoken or
written). The misguided view of corpora as containing 'the language' may lead to
generalisations from the examination of inappropriate corpora (e.g.,
generalising from a specialised corpus). Also, treating any large collection of
texts as a corpus, that is, as a representative collection, may lead to
conclusions based on the analysis of non-representative samples, for example,
when using the Web as a corpus. This is not to deny that the Web is a vast, and
freely available, resource of attested language use, but, rather, to stress that
in order for the Web to be used effectively for teaching/learning purposes its
users need to be aware of both its potential and limitations (see Kilgarriff
& Grefenstette, 2003; Meyer et al., 2003; Robb, 2003; Volk, 2002). For
example, the Web contains both NS and NNS English.

Finally, many language teachers have only limited access to corpora and
corpus tools, usually through free online concordancers provided for
demonstration purposes. These free tools allow for a small sample of concordance
lines (usually 40-50), which may or may not be sufficient for learners to get a
clear picture of the language feature they are investigating. These samplers
usually give a fixed number of words, typically 5-10, on either side of the key
word/phrase, which may be inadequate for certain learning situations. Finally,
these free tools do not always give information about the medium or genre of
each concordance line. Also, because of limited data and restricted use of
corpus software, teachers may see only easily observable patterns (e.g.,
adjacent collocations), and not less readily apparent ones (e.g., discontinuous
collocations). Therefore, it would be wise to investigate any limitations of
free corpus tools and take them into account.

Conclusion

Corpora and language description

Corpus-based linguistic research has provided increasingly clear and accurate
descriptions of native and learner language, and has furnished linguistics and
language teaching with new insights into language structure and use. Corpora
have made it possible to compare native intuitions with actual use, and move
from prescription to description. Thanks to corpora, language description for
language teaching has been moving from over-generalised and exception-ridden
rules towards flexible and context-specific patterns. Finally, due to
corpus-based language analysis we are now in a position to identify the
frequency of particular language features both with reference to language use as
a whole and, more importantly, with reference to specific contexts. In fact, the
analysis of large corpora not only makes it possible to identify frequent
patterns and uses, but also affords enough data to examine rare or idiosyncratic
ones. [-22-]

Corpora as language teaching tools

The increasing availability of corpora and ease of access to them,
particularly through the World Wide Web, places a wealth of actual rather than
made-up examples from different contexts at the fingertips of both teachers and
learners. Corpus-based teaching is well suited to raising awareness of the
varieties of English. Corpora also offer a welcome alternative to both
specially-constructed pedagogical texts and authentic texts-- the former being
densely packed with the target language features, the latter offering only a
partial picture of a language element. Another important contribution of corpora
is the enhancement of discovery approaches to learning, which regard learners as
language researchers. The development of corpus tools has also increased the
value of the language lab.

Corpora, learners and teachers

The use of corpora in language teaching has helped redefine learner and
teacher roles. It has reinforced learner-centred methodologies, and facilitated
a further step away from the conception of teachers as sources of knowledge and
providers of input, towards one of teachers as guides and facilitators, or even
co-researchers. Corpus use has also introduced the need for learners and
teachers to acquire new skills, and has placed increased emphasis on the
necessity for teachers to develop their awareness of the language they teach.
Finally, corpus-based research and teaching has the potential to empower
non-native teachers and researchers, since native speaker introspection is no
longer considered the one infallible source of insights into language structure
and use.

Corpora and language teaching: What kind of relationship?

There is still a lot of ground to be covered until corpus use becomes a
staple of language teaching and learning. In fact, if we wanted to describe the
present relationship of most language teachers with corpora, then perhaps 'blind
date' would be the most fitting metaphor. [22] However, the
relationship between corpora and language teaching is definitely not 'a fling',
as corpus-based materials and teaching approaches are becoming ever more
pervasive in language teaching. But then again, it would be misleading to call
the relationship a marriage, and short-sighted to wish it to become one. Corpora
can and will continue to contribute greatly to language teaching in a multitude
of ways, [23] but it would be
misguided to treat them as a panacea. Corpus use is not meant to replace
existing teaching methodologies, but to enrich and enhance them. If the
time-dishonoured ELT pendulum is to be prevented from performing another one of
its swings, then the use of corpora should not be treated as an alternative to,
or rival of, existing teaching approaches, but as a welcome addition. [-23-]

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Notes

[*] This paper is
based on my plenary address at INGED 2003 International Conference,
Multiculturalism in ELT Practices: Unity and Diversity, organised jointly
by BETA (Romania), ETAI (Israel), INGED/ELEA (Turkey) and TESOL Greece, Baskent
University, Ankara, Turkey, 10-12 October 2003. I would like to thank Paul Baker
(Lancaster University) for directing me to relevant corpus studies. Special
thanks are due to Aliki Chapple for editing the different incarnations of this
paper.

[1] For short
overviews see McEnery & Gabrielatos (2005, forthcoming), Pravec
(2002).

[2] See also the
debate in the Correspondence section of ELT Journal (Carter &
McCarthy, 1996; Prodromou, 1996a, 1996b)

[3] For a
comprehensive account of native-speaker and learner corpora, with relevant
references and links to websites, see Xiao (forthcoming), http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/xiaoz/papers/corpus%20survey.htm.
For a glossary of terms used in corpus linguistics see McEnery & Wilson
(2001).

[4] Of course,
corpus compilers need to have already secured permission from the copyright
holders.

[5] For a
discussion of mark-up and annotation see McEnery et al. (2005).

[6] The annotation
was carried out automatically by the Wmatrix interface (Rayson, 2001,
2003), http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ucrel/wmatrix/
using the CLAWS part of speech tagger, http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/ucrel/claws/.
For a guide to the complete tagset used in the BNC see http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ucrel/bnc2/bnc2guide.htm

[7] The initial
sample was 1,000 sentences, but was reduced to 831 after non-conditional uses of
if and sentences with even if were removed. As the coursebooks
examined presented only syntactically straightforward sentences, and in order to
examine ELT materials on their own terms, cases of embedded or elliptical
clauses and idiomatic uses were also excluded, leaving 710
if-conditionals.

[8] See also
Ferguson (2001), Fulcher (1991), Maule (1988), Wang (1991).

[9] Although EAP
is a sub-field of ESP, as both terms refer to language teaching with a better
defined and narrower focus than "general English," it has become common practice
to treat ESP and EAP as somehow distinct, though closely related, areas (see
Duddley-Evans & St. John, 1998; Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Masters &
Brinton, 1998; Robinson, 1991; Swales, 1985).

[10] See also the
report of the Learning Technologies Group, Oxford University Computing Services
(http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/reports/plag_index.xml.

[11] On the use
of terminology in language teaching see Borg (1999). [-34-]

[12] For example,
identifying the topic, the gist, or specific information, or using the context,
co-text and background knowledge to infer meaning or attitude (see Nuttall,
1996; Wallace, 1992).

[13] Calculated
on the basis of a standard A4 page, single spaced, using Times New Roman
12.

[14] The term
"authentic texts" is used here as a shorthand for "texts addressed to native
speakers of a language." For a discussion of "authenticity" in language teaching
see Taylor (1994), Widdowson (1979, 1990).

[15]
Text-based refers to the use of a single text, or a small number of short
texts, as language data. For examples of text-based language awareness studies
see James & Garrett (1991).

[16] The texts
used were: "Diet Guidelines Aimed at Healthy People," by Emily Gersema, 26
September 2003, http://www.stopgettingsick.com/templates/news_template.cfm/7061;
"Quick-fix diets fail fat Britons," by Jo Revill, The Observer, 5 January
2003, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,868891,00.html
"You CAN Lose the Weight You Want!" http://www.eatandburn.com/3/?rid=22&code=ncdfr20607&publisher=&transid=.

[17] The
concordance was derived from the three texts using Wmatrix (see note
6).

[18] Sample 4 is
given in an alternative view to a concordance, called "sentence view." Both sets
of data are from the British National Corpus and were derived using the
BNCweb interface, developed at the University of Zurich (http://homepage.mac.com/bncweb/home.html.

[19] From this
point on, "corpus sample" will be used to refer to collections of examples from
a corpus in either "concordance" or "sentence" format.

[20] For reasons
of space, only a random sample of 10 sentences is given here; students should be
given a larger corpus sample so that more patterns are discernible.

[21] For a
discussion of different views on the role of theory and intuitions in
corpus-based research see McEnery & Gabrielatos (2005, forthcoming).

[22] I would like
to thank Alan Waters (Lancaster University) for prompting this metaphor by
suggesting "first date."

[23] For example,
the development and availability of multimodal spoken corpora, that is,
corpora in which the transcribed text is linked to sound and video files (Nivre,
et al., 1998), will enable researchers, materials writers, teachers and learners
to use corpora to focus on phonological features, as well as facial expressions,
gestures and body language.

About the Author
Costas Gabrielatos has worked as a language
teacher, teacher educator and lecturer. He is currently a doctoral candidate at
Lancaster University, UK, doing corpus-based research on English
if-conditionals. He is also a part-time tutor and researcher in linguistics. His
main areas of interest are tense, aspect and modality in English, and the
implications of corpus-based language analysis for language teaching and teacher
education.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Free/affordable corpora and corpus tools

British National Corpus Sampler (1 million words or written and 1 million
words of spoken English): http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/getting/sampler.html.
Also, free, but restricted, access to the full BNC: http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html

Collins WordbanksOnline English corpus (concordance and collocation
samplers): http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx

The Compleat Lexical Tutor: http://132.208.224.131/

Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE): http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase

Variation in English Words and Phrases (Mark Davies, Brigham Young
University). Interface to the full British National Corpus (100 million
words): http://view.byu.edu/

Web Concordancer (works with a variety of corpora): http://www.edict.com.hk/concordance/

WebCorp: The Web As Corpus (University of Liverpool): http://www.webcorp.org.uk/

WordNet: A Lexical Database for the English Language (Princeton
University): http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn

WordSmith Tools: http://www1.oup.co.uk/elt/catalogue/Multimedia/WordSmithTools3.0

Appendix 2. Online courses and information on language corpora

Concordancing in the classroom / Data-driven learning techniques: http://www.edict.com.hk/concordance/aboutweb.htm#Concordancing%20in%20the%20classrroom

Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Web-based Course (Lancaster University):
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/courses/ahaw-nscl/clc_top.htm

A companion to Corpus Linguistics (McEnery & Wilson, 2001): http://bowland-files.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/ihe/linguistics/contents.htm

Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers, Module
3.4, Corpus Linguistics (written by Tony McEnery and Andrew Wilson): http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod3-4.htm.

Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers, Module
2.4, Using concordance programs in the modern foreign languages classroom
(written by Marie-Noëlle Lamy, Hans Jørgen Klarskov Mortensensium and Graham
Davies): http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod2-4.htm#_Toc481294151.

Catherine Ball, Georgetown University: http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/corpora/tutorial.html

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