Corpora: State of the art

[Christopher Tribble]

Dear Colleagues

I am preparing for a plenary talk I have been asked to give at the
forthcoming Barcelona IATEFL Computer SIG in late June.  My talk has the
title:

"Language corpora: what relevance do they have for English language
teachers?"

My current plan is

1/	to review the impact to date of corpus informed approaches in linguistics
to lexicography and grammatical description
2/	to review the developments that have been achieved in the last ten years
in Data Driven Learning / classroom concordancing
3/	to comment on ways in which teachers use corpora at the moment, and the
benefits they feel they and their students get from this use.
4/	to summarise issues arising from this discussion and to make proposals
for the extension of "corpus-informed" approaches in ELT

In order to prepare section 3 above, I would be hugely grateful if those of
you who use corpora in your teaching could complete the short questionnaire
below.  I would also be grateful if you could forward this to others you
might be in touch with who are not necessarily on this list.

Thanks for your help

Chris Tribble
-------------
QUESTIONNAIRE

COMMENTS:
A.	I am keeping this deliberately low tec.  Could you please put your
answers in the line below the question (next to the word "response" and
PLEASE SEND YOUR REPLY IN PLAIN TEXT
B.	For the purposes of this questionnaire, corpus refers to any
electronically readable collection of texts

YOU

1)	FAMILY NAME
response:
2)	GIVEN NAME
response:
3)	TITLE
response:
4)	INSTITUTION
response:
5)	EMAIL ADDRESS
response:
6)	Which language(s) do you teach 

-	Lang 1:
response:
-	Lang 2:
response:
-	Lang 3:
response:
7)	How do you rate your expertise as a computer user?
	(please mark the appropriate level with "x")
-	beginner
-	not bad
-	confident but could learn more
-	expert

8)	What operating system do you use on the computers you teach with?
	(please mark the appropriate OS with "x")
-	MS Windows
-	Unix or related
-	Mac OS
-	Other (please specify below)
response:
9)	Do you have a computer at home?
	(please mark the appropriate option with "x")
Yes
No

YOUR STUDENTS

10)	What kind of institution do you currently teach in?
	(please mark the appropriate institution with "x")
-	University or College
-	State school - Senior
-	State school - Junior
-	Private sector adult
-	Private sector junior
-	Other	(please specify below)
response:
11)	What level of student to you currently teach
	(please mark the appropriate level with "x")
-	beginner
-	intermediate
-	upper intermediate
-	advanced
-	Other	(please specify below)
response:
12)	What kind of student do you teach most of the time?
	(please mark the appropriate category with "x")
-	Language majors (college / university level)
-	ESP students (Business)
-	ESP students (Other subjects)
-	EAP students
-	General English students
-	Other	(please specify below)
response:
13)	How many years have you been using corpora in your teaching?
	(please mark the appropriate response with "x")
up to 1 year
up to 3 years
up to 5 years
up to 10 years
more than 10 years

14)	If you use published corpora, please list up to 5 of the ones you
currently use:
-	corpus 1
response:
-	corpus 2
response:
-	corpus 3
response:
-	corpus 4
response:
-	corpus 5
response:

15)	If you use unpublished corpus material, what kind of data do you and
your students find most useful?
response:
16)	Which published programs do you use for analysing corpora - please list
below
response:
17)	Which of these published programs do you use find most useful for
analysing corpora?
response:
18)	Why?
response:

IMPACT
19)	To what extent do you feel that working with corpora has changed the way
you teach?
-	a lot
-	a bit
-	not much
-	not at all

20)	Why?
response:
21)	To what extent do you feel that a corpus informed approach to language
teaching has helped your students?
-	a lot
-	a bit
-	not much
-	not at all

22)	Why?  Can you cite any empirical support for this?
response:
23)	Please say in one sentence why you feel corpora are relevant for
language teachers?
response:
24)	If you have any other comments you would like to make, please put them
below.
response:

------------------------------
Please send your replies to me, Chris Tribble
(christopher_tribble at compuserve.com), as soon as possible - that way I'll be
able to use your responses in the talk in Barcelona


Very many thanks for your help.

IN EUROPE UNTIL JULY 27
--
		Dr Christopher Tribble
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		ctribble at sri.lanka.net
Home Page	http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Christopher_Tribble