Re: Corpora: Learner Corpora

From: Nadja Nesselhauf (nadjanesselhauf@web.de)
Date: Sat Apr 20 2002 - 12:36:52 MET DST

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    Hanelle,

    Dave Willis (e.g. in The Lexical Syllabus 1990) calls a corpus designed to
    help learners by including the type of language they need to acquire a
    "learner's corpus". This term is not widely used, however, and is a bit
    unfortunate owing to its similarity to "learner corpus", which has become a
    fairly established term (for a corpus of learner language, as you said). If
    you actually creating such a corpus (i.e. a systematic collection of
    scientific texts written by native speakers) and are not merely looking for
    a collection of uses of scientific terms as Eric Atwell suggested, and would
    like information on how to best use a self-made small ESP corpus in the
    classroom, you might want to have a look at Ma, Bruce, Learning strategies
    in ESP classroom concordancing: an initial investigation into data-driven
    learning; In Flowerdew /Tong 1994, Entering Text (Hong Kong: University of
    Secience and Technology).

    Hope this helps.

    Best wishes,
    Nadja Nesselhauf

    Nadja Nesselhauf
    Dep't of English
    University of Basel
    Switzerland

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Fourie H Me <HFOURIE@sun.ac.za>
    To: <CORPORA@HD.UIB.NO>
    Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 12:49 PM
    Subject: Corpora: Learner Corpora

    > 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
    >



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