Universidad Pedagógica Experimental LibertadorInstituto Pedagógico Dr. Luís Beltrán Prieto

FigueroaDepartamento de Idiomas Modernos

Núcleo de Investigación para el Estudio y Enseñanza de Lenguas

Prof. Chinger Zapata

Teaching Academic Writing in English:A Corpus-based Approach

Overview• A brief contextualization of ICT and CALL

• A brief description of the tools: • Corpus of Contemporary American English

(COCA)• AntConc

• Cases analyzed with COCA• Cases analyzed with AntConc

• Implications for Academic Writing in English

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)It is the use of computers as communication tools (as well as aids to learning, teaching and assessment) […] (Fallows & Bhanot, 2002)

The field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) combines science and technology. It includes the full range of computer hardware and software, telecommunication and cell phones, the Internet and Web, wired and wireless networks, digital still and video cameras, robotics, and so on. It includes the field of Computer and Information Science and a huge and rapidly growing knowledge base that is being developed by practitioners and researchers. ICT has proven to be a valuable aid to solving problems and accomplishing tasks in business, industry, government, education, and many other human endeavors (Moursund, 2005).

Computer-AssistedLanguage Learning (CALL)Levy (1997) defines CALL as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning“ (p. 1).

As a new pedagogy, digitalized corpora are used to facilitate inductive data-driven language learning in ways that have not been possible in the past. Language data is important for learning because it activates learners’ mental mechanisms and becomes essential input for second or foreign language acquisition. Various language learning activities or tasks that include listening, speaking, reading, writing, translation or a combination of two or more skills can be constructed based on various corpora and adaptive/automatic tools to achieve the goal of computational scaffolding (Chang & Chang, 2004, p. 15).

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

- It was created in 1990 by Mark Davies at Young Brigham University.

- It contains more than 425 million words.- It has five genres: spoken, fiction,

popular magazines, newspapers, academic.

AntConc

- It is a freeware, multiplatform tool.- It contains seven tools:

Concordance ToolIt shows search results in a 'KWIC' format. This allows you to see how words and phrases are commonly used in a corpus of texts.

Concordance Plot ToolIt shows search results plotted as a 'barcode' format. This allows you to see the position where search results appear in target texts.

File View ToolIt shows the text of individual files. This allows you to investigate in more detail the results generated in other tools of AntConc.

Cluster / N-GramsIt shows clusters based on the search condition. In effect it summarizes the results generated in the Concordance Tool or Concordance Plot Tool. The N-Grams Tool, on the other hand, scans the entire corpus for 'N' (e.g. 1 word, 2 words…) length clusters. This allows you to find common expressions in a corpus.

CollocatesIt shows the collocates of a search term. This allows you to investigate non-sequential patterns in language.

Word ListIt counts all the words in the corpus and presents them in an ordered list. This allows you to quickly find which words are the most frequent in a corpus.

Keyword ListIt shows the which words are unusually frequent (or infrequent) in the corpus in comparison with the words in a reference corpus. This allows you to identify characteristic words in the corpus, for example, as part of a genre or ESP study.

Infinitive verb form with “to” Infinitive verb form without “to”

Vs.

First Case: Syntax Structure

Why would a scholar likeProf. Du Bois use both?

How should it be written so that it conforms with standard

academic English?

In the first definition PROVISIONALLYhas been written between commas.

In this case, it has been written without the commas.

Second Case: PunctuationAnalysis of provisionally

Which is the correct form?

Third Case: Discourse Markers

Analysis of That IsAccording to authors like Martin Zorraquino and Portoles (1999) and Trujillo (2003), THAT IS is an appositive discourse marker. APPOSITIVES are used to introduce an explanation or a clarification. The most common ones are that is, in other words, for example, etc.- That is. It is used to give more exact information about something or to correct a statement. Example: - One solution would be to change the shape of the screen, that is, to make it wider.- Languages are taught by the direct method, that is, without using the student's own language.- I loved her - that is, I thought I did.- The fare is reduced for children, that is, anyone under 15 years old.

17 Cases between commas / Example:583. If these errors result from overgeneralization of the causative/inchoative alternation, one should also find transitive (non-alternating) verbs used intransitively, that is, anticausative errors. This case is used to introduce a clarification of one aspect referred to in the previous segment.

15 Cases between semi colon (;) and comma (,) / Example:582. English orthography, in contrast, is a phonologically deep system; that is, although governed by phonemic constraints, it tends to preserve morphological information at the expense of phonological transparency. This case is used to introduce an explanation of one aspect referred to in the previous segment.

3 Cases between period (.) and comma (,) / Example:596. Corpus linguistics (CL) can pinpoint areas of interest for further/closer analysis (see also Mautner 2007). That is, emerging patterns (e.g., keywords, collocations) lead to the examination of their (expanded) concordances, or, when needed, the examination of whole texts. This case is used to introduce an explanation of the whole previous segment.4 Cases between dash (-) and comma (,) / Example: 610. In this study, the rationale for the source of texts (UK newspapers) was made explicit in the project aims, and the corpus was derived through a query arrived at via an algorithm developed during the initial phase of the project (see Gabrielatos 2007), which arguably ensured that the corpus was representative—that is, it comprised articles relevant to (issues related to) RASIM. This case is used to either introduce a clarification or an explanation of one aspect referred to in the previous segment. It is, apparently, used as a wildcard.

Four Case: Vocabulary ChoiceAnalysis of Planification

Summary: English Language Curriculum Evaluation in Oman

 Worldwide, teaching styles, curriculum design & development and the comprehension of the learning process are being evaluated and improved by educationalists in order to, as has become necessary, update the methodology used. The lack of structure in the Ministry of Education in Oman has impeded the development of curriculum evaluation. Curriculum evaluation focuses on gathering and analyzing relevant data in order to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum in order for it to be improved. This evaluation must take place both internally and externally, where both the outcome and the process of planification of the curriculum are taken into account. In order to  evaluate the situation in Oman, a document analysis method was applied to address the main problems at hand.

Because:- specialized books do not always have all the answers

regarding language usage,- many specialized books have fake examples of language, - experts and teachers do not know everything,- not matter how wide dictionaries may be, they do not hold all

the data,

I recommend:- using technology to teach and learn about languages.- teachers to encourage students to self-instruct via technology.- using corpora and software to rely on authentic material.- you to be responsible with your search results.- exploiting technology to teach others.

Final Considerations

Thank you!chzapata@ipb.upel.edu.ve

@chingerzapata

ReferencesChang, J. & Chang, Y. (2004). Computer Assisted Language Learning Based on Corpora and Natural Language Processing: The Experience of Project CANDLE. An Interactive Workshop on Language e-LearningFallows, S. & Bhanot, R. (2002). Educational Development through Information and Communications Technologies. Kogan Page Limited, Great BritainLevy, M. (1997). CALL: Context and Conceptualisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moursund, D. (2005). Introduction to Information and Communication Technology in Education . University of Oregon, USA.