Corpora: Announcement: Course - Corpora in language teaching

[John Sinclair]

Announcement:


HOW TO USE CORPORA IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

an intensive one-week course

at THE TUSCAN WORD CENTRE
near Florence, Tuscany, Italy

DATES:  OCTOBER 15-20

supported in part by the

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

scholarships available----APPLY NOW!
(see NOTE at the end of this announcement)

see website http://www.twc.it

Total fee 1100 euros
(participation 600
accomm. and meals, seven nights, 500)



RATIONALE

The results of corpus study have informed language
 teaching for many years, leaving such monuments
as West's General Service List. For the last twenty
 years electronic corpora have been in regular use
 in a number of language-teaching institutions,
and they increasingly inform dictionaries, grammars
and other reference books and teaching courses.

The growth of the influence of corpora has aroused
 considerable controversy in applied linguistics,
and debates continue. Theoretical and descriptive
linguists, whose work over the last fifty years
has largely focused on mental aspects of language
 rather than usage, have recently come to recognise
 the importance of data, particularly the kind of
organised data that is available from a corpus.
The Tuscan Word Centre considers that the time is
ripe for recognising that corpora are here to stay,
and language teachers should be informed about the
range of activities all over the world, should be
in command of the routines of access to corpora
and retrieval of useful results, and should plan
possible uses of corpora in their own practice
and in their own institutions. So TWC has gathered
a keynote team of presenters, all of whom are
internationally respected, and very experienced
in the use of corpora in language teaching.


TOPIC LEADERS

Prof Michael BARLOW, Rice University, Texas, USA
Dr Silvia BERNARDINI, University of Bologna, Forlí, Italy
Prof Susan CONRAD, Portland State University, Oregon, USA
Dr Pernilla DANIELSSON, University of Birmingham, UK
Dr Susan HUNSTON, University of Birmingham, UK
Prof Anna MAURANEN, Tampere University, Finland
Prof Amy TSUI Bik May, University of Hong Kong, HK
Prof YANG Hui-Zhong, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
The resident staff at TWC consists of:
Prof Elena TOGNINI BONELLI, University of Lecce, Italy
Prof John SINCLAIR, University of Birmingham, UK

Members of this team will lead a programme around the
following topics; each topic will take up about half a day.

TOPICS

Corpus, text and discourse in LSP.
Spoken corpus for an ordinary learner
Software for corpus access and analysis:
What teachers have always wanted to know
  - and how corpora can help
Language Variation as a Central Concept in Language Teaching
Learners' Corpora:
Corpora in the classroom
The use of corpus evidence in language teaching
Implications of theoretical changes on LT:

All participants will be invited to contribute a short paper.

APPLY PROMPTLY - especially for scholarships - see NOTE below
WEBSITE  http://www.twc.it

Enquiries mailto:jms at twc.it

Course Organiser: John Sinclair

NOTE on scholarships
There are two kinds of scholarship available, courtesy of the
EC Programme Improving Human Potential.
(a) young researchers of European nationality (under 35)
(b) researchers of European nationality working outside Europe
(no age limit)
"Europe" in this sense is the Union and the Associated States.
John Sinclair
The Tuscan Word Centre
Vellano 409
51010 Pescia (PT)
Italia

Telephone: +39 (0)572 409251
	Fax:	   409253
     Office:	   409900

web page <www.twc.it>