Re: [Corpora-List] Plea for help

From: Isa Abdul kaader (I.Abdul-kaader@postgrad.umist.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Nov 17 2002 - 01:54:53 MET

  • Next message: Ute Römer: "Re: [Corpora-List] Plea for help"

    Hi Geoffrey,

        Many thanks for your suggestions, Geoffrey and to all the others who gave
    such wonderful advise with books etc for me to get an understanding of Corpus
    Linguistics.

       Having understood the essentials, have decided to focus on attention on
    academic writing especially
    1. Business Writing ( letters of compliant and adjustment) and /or
    2. Technical Report writing ( could be hardware/software developemnt in higher
    technical institutions).

        
        Apart from the critical study in langauge teaching materials by Kennedy (
    1987a) Holmes ( 1988), Mindt ( 1992) and especially Conrad ( 1996b)who dealt
    with academic text and corpus based techniques, ARE there any other study that
    looks at specialized registers like business writing and technical reports.

         Have yet to get full access to BNC but would like to know if such corpora
    ( registers) could be obtained from the "Official document and Academic Prose"
    listing in the BNC index to compare the linguistic characteristics of the
    corpus that I wish to compile.

         I want to compile a small corpus (20,000 to 30,000) with regard to the
    register listed. I do NOT KNOW how to get started with this. Need all help
    with this.

          In short, I am interested in compiling a corpus to study its
    characteristics and applications to exploit it to design best possible
    materials and activities to help my students understand and produce the
    registers listed above appropriately (helping students with language that is
    actually used in these settings).

         Keen to know research that states appropriateness and potential of
    corpus ( including collacations) in Computer Assisted Langauge Learning at
    higher insitutions especially to teach technical writing.

    Very many thanks in advance for your all your help.

    Rafiq
    Temsek Polytechnic
    Singapore



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Nov 17 2002 - 02:06:01 MET