[Corpora-List] Data-Driven Learning materials

Wed Apr 16 13:13:15 UTC 2008

Gill / Adam 

I'm in agreement with both. I did some surveys three or four years ago and
found that the majority of people involved in DDL work were:

1/	confident computer users (which rules our a LOT of language teachers
in my experience teaching on the MA at King's!!)
2/	who own their own PC
3/	who teach at university level
4/	with either specialist language majors, or English for Academic
Purposes students
5	and who have access to computer labs...

Most teachers in the ELT industry have to teach too many hours with large
groups and have neither the space, the resources nor the time to do DDL.

I think it's changing - especially as more universities provide access
courses and in-sessional programmes - and this is reflected in the
submissions to journals like the Journal of English for Academic Purposes
and ESPJ, or the changing profile of papers given at TALC and PALC.  But,
having started to plough this furrow in the early 90's, I still feel that
there's some way to go...

Still - the cups half full, isn't it!!??

Best

C:
--
Dr Christopher Tribble
TEL #1  || +44 (0)20 7833 4271
TEL #2  || +44 161 929 4411
EMAIL   || ctribble at clara.co.uk
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________________________________

From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of
Gill Philip
Sent: 16 April 2008 13:52
To: corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Data-Driven Learning materials

dear all,
I think Adam is partially right, but, as someone who does engage in DDL, I'd
like to point out another couple of reasons why there is so little "out
there":
(i) many materials are created for individuals or small groups and therefore
not put online/published as 'general' language notes; and 
(ii) others are created on the fly in real time, and so never even make it
into a paper format, i.e. the concordances are put up on screen in class and
the teacher (me, but I'm sure others do the same) leads students through the
analysis. Once I get the interactive whiteboard up and running, such ad-hoc
exercises may well become more amenable to digital archiving, but for now
they remain ephemeral.

best,
Gill 

On 16/04/2008, Adam Kilgarriff <adam at lexmasterclass.com> wrote: 

	Dear Alex,

	you say
	>  Is there really so little out there? Why? 

	I think the reason is simple: Concordances are too tough for
learners.
	So DDL has not taken off.  After 20 years, it remains a tiny
minority interest.

	Our response is to select corpus sentences according to readability.

	The beta version of the Sketch Engine now has an option to sort
concordances 
	"best first", from a learner's point of view, and we are working on
other ways of 
	using corpora in language learning in which we only show 
	users sentences which they are likely to be able to read and
understand.

	Adam

	2008/4/15 Alex Boulton <Alex.Boulton at univ-nancy2.fr>:

		Dear all

		I recently requested information on any published materials
or on-line materials

		adopting a data-driven learning approach. My thanks to the
following for their replies:

		*	Adam Turner 
		*	Chris Tribble 
		*	Mike Barlow 
		*	Brett Reynolds 
		*	Stéphanie O'Riordan 
		*	Antoinette Renouf 
		*	James Thomas 
		*	Linda Bawcom 
		*	Marcia Veirano Pinto 
		*	Przemek Kaszubski 
		*	Simon Smith 
		*	John Milton

		Unfortunately (if unsurprisingly), there were no real
additions to the publications

		I listed in the original mail. Is there really so little out
there? Why?

	...

	-- 
	================================================
	Adam Kilgarriff http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk
<http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/>  
	Lexical Computing Ltd http://www.sketchengine.co.uk
<http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/> 
	Lexicography MasterClass Ltd http://www.lexmasterclass.com
<http://www.lexmasterclass.com/> 
	Universities of Leeds and Sussex adam at lexmasterclass.com
	================================================ 
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-- 
*********************************
Dr. Gill Philip
CILTA
Università degli Studi di Bologna
Piazza San Giovanni in Monte, 4
40124 Bologna
Italy 

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