Corpus linguistics and language teaching: learning English vocabulary through corpus work

摘要

Despite the growing importance of corpora in linguistic research, the use of these language databases is relatively scarce in the area of language teaching (Granger 1994; Palacios 2005). This paper discusses the teaching potential of corpora in EFL settings (Oghigian & Chujo 2010), paying special attention to their role in the study of English vocabulary (Johns 1991, Leech 1997, Carter 1998). After examining several of the most outstanding corpus tools at our disposal, this work offers some practical ideas on the use of corpora for vocabulary teaching. It presents four different corpus-based activities and four different ways of working with these resources in the classroom. The ultimate objective of this paper consists in showing the pedagogical usefulness of corpora for vocabulary teaching and learning, the contribution of corpus work to the development of some basic skills for lifelong learning (European framework for key competences 2007) and the importance of discovery learning in these activities.