Re: Corpora: Learner Corpora

From: Eric Atwell (eric@comp.leeds.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 19 2002 - 14:17:32 MET DST

  • Next message: Kow Kuroda: "Corpora: Looking for English phonetic corpora"

    Hanelle,
    greetings,
    what you describe sounds like a dictionary or glossary of specialist
    terms, not a corpus. In Corpus Linguistics, a "corpus" is a collection
    of texts, a sample representing language use of a particular kind.
    For example, a "learner corpus" is a collection of text samples written
    (or spoken) by learners (of English, or of another language...).
    I would suggest you need a dictionary of scientific terms, but I guess
    lecturers in the relevant Science department(s) in your university would
    be better qualified than me to propose the most appropriate specialist
    dictionaries. I can recommend an online dictionary of computer science
    terminology: the free online dictionary included in BURKS (Brighton
    University Resource Kit for Students of computer science), avaliable on
    DVD/CD and also on WWWW, see http://burks.bton.ac.uk/
    Incidentally, BURKS also includes lots of software and tutorials, even
    whole textbooks - it could be used as a "corpus" of computer science...

    These could be supplemented with a general English
    dictionary aimed at learners of English as a second/foreign language,
    for example the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English LDOCE is a
    standard dictionary I recommend to students here who are learinng
    English as a second language.

    Hope this helps,

    Eric Atwell

    On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Fourie H Me wrote:

    > Dear all,
    >
    > I am involved in a research project that is trying to establish a learner
    > corpus for first year students in the Science Faculty. Here's the catch:
    > for lack of a better word, I use "learner corpus" to refer to a corpus of
    > scientific terms and their use, in English, for students whose home language
    > is not English and who therefore need some help to use these terms
    > efficiently for their studies. A web-search shows that "learner corpora" is
    > generally used to "diagnose learners' errors so as to render pedagogical
    > solutions.", i.e. a corpus obtained from the learners' language and thus in
    > the opposite direction of what I'm looking for. So, if anybody knows where
    > to find more information on what I'm really looking for, or can tell me what
    > the proper term is for a corpus as I've described it, I'd be extremely
    > grateful!
    >
    > Thanks in advance!
    >
    > Hanelle Fourie
    >
    > Division for University Education
    > University of Stellenbosch
    > South Africa
    >
    >

    -- 
    Eric Atwell, Distributed Multimedia Systems MSc Tutor & SOCRATES Tutor
    School of Computing, University of Leeds, LEEDS LS2 9JT
    TEL: 0113-2335430  MOBILE: 0775-1039104 FAX: 0113-2335468
    WWW: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/eric  EMAIL: eric@comp.leeds.ac.uk
    



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