[Corpora-List] Plea for help

[Isa Abdul kaader]

Hi Geoffrey,

    Many thanks for your suggestions, Geoffrey and to all the others who gave
such wonderful advise with books etc for me to get an understanding of Corpus
Linguistics.

   Having understood the essentials, have decided to focus on attention on
academic writing especially
1. Business Writing ( letters of compliant and adjustment) and /or
2. Technical Report writing ( could be hardware/software developemnt in higher
technical institutions).


    Apart from the critical study in langauge teaching materials by Kennedy (
1987a) Holmes ( 1988), Mindt ( 1992) and especially Conrad ( 1996b)who dealt
with academic text and corpus based techniques, ARE there any other study that
looks at specialized registers like business writing and technical reports.

     Have yet to get full access to BNC but would like to know if such corpora
( registers) could be obtained from the "Official document and Academic Prose"
listing in the BNC index to compare the linguistic characteristics of the
corpus that I wish to compile.

     I want to compile a small corpus (20,000 to 30,000) with regard to the
register listed. I do NOT KNOW how to get started with this.  Need all help
with this.

      In short, I am interested in compiling a corpus to study its
characteristics and applications to exploit it to design best possible
materials and activities to help my students understand and produce the
registers listed above appropriately (helping students with language that is
actually used in these settings).

     Keen to know research that states appropriateness and potential of
corpus ( including collacations) in Computer Assisted Langauge Learning at
higher insitutions especially to teach technical writing.

Very many thanks in advance for your all your help.

Rafiq
Temsek Polytechnic
Singapore