In this
article, the authors discuss the development and use of concordancing software
for language learning. This software allows language learners to browse and
search an off-line English corpus which originated from the Web. There seems to
be several major problems with the concordance program (although the authors
admit to this). Not only was the context completely removed from the
collocations, but also neologisms were taken out. Many grammatical errors have
not been filtered out and there is a definite mix of linguistic styles, e.g.
written English, 'spoken' English, and academic or technical English. Despite
the fact that the authors both acknowledged and tried to remedy some of these
problems, it seems to me that other options were overlooked. Instead of using part
of a one trillion word Web corpus, why not concentrate on building and
maintaining a smaller corpus of written English? This corpus could be
controlled for many of other unwanted features of the larger corpus and it
could focus specifically on written academic English. It seems as though a more
manageable and accurate database could be a lot more beneficial to language
learners (especially advanced ones) than the current corpus. That being said,
concordancing software for language learners is, in theory, an excellent tool.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteI also think concordance softwares are great tools for language learners and you raise a good point here which was discussed in the Lee article I read. In the Lee article the author mentions how more manageable concordances could be made for teaching purposes that could benefit the learners. Overall concordances are great tools but they are most beneficial when used judiciously and especially when made appropriate for the level of the learners.
Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it is difficult to find a proporate corpus for a specific research. In particular for the teaching, the corpus teachers or students can apply is very limited. Using the corpus to find the concordance would be a helpful way to collect the most common collocation. If there are more corpus, maybe the smaller ones, which can be used for students themselves to distinguish the differences among words and develop their langauge awareness. At the same time, they can be used for teachers to collect typical examples of languge use.