Abstract
The aim of this paper is to review and analyse relevant factors related to the implementation of corpus linguistics (CL) in higher education. First we set out to describe underlying principles of CL and its developments in relation to theoretical linguistics and its applications in modern teaching practices. Then we attempt to establish how different types of corpora have contributed to the development of direct and indirect approaches in language teaching. We single out Data Driven Learning (DDL) due to its relevance in applied linguistics literature, and examine in detail advantages and drawbacks. Finally, we outline problems concerning the implementation of CL in the classroom since awareness of the limitations of CL is vital for its future success.
Highlights
It is commonplace that rapid progress in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has modified enormously the world we live in, relationships among individuals and interaction between different speech communities
The pattern set by the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English since 1988 with the adoption of its ‘defining vocabulary’, that is the exclusive use of the 2000 most frequent English words has been immediately followed by other common learners dictionaries and, to a much lesser extent, by bilingual dictionaries
Teubert (2004) remarks, for instance, that parallel corpora, i.e. corpora containing original texts and their translations, are far superior to bilingual dictionaries: Even the largest bilingual dictionary will present only a tiny segment of the translation equivalents we find in a not too small parallel corpus. (...) bilingual dictionaries do not help to translate into a language we are not very familiar with
Summary
It is commonplace that rapid progress in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has modified enormously the world we live in, relationships among individuals and interaction between different speech communities. It is safe to say that at the opening of the twenty-first century the more educated sectors of every nation feel they are part of a global community more so than a few decades back In this new context, languages are contradictorily perceived either as defying insurmountable obstacles or as offering exciting challenges. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses development, but a diachronician like Fennell views this revolution, which started during the 1980s and 1990s in the US, as significant an event as the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, making English more global than ever before (2006: 256-8) Lavid has put it quite graphically as “a move from muscle to intelligence (2005: 31). (...) share the common assumptions that linguistic theorizing should be driven first and foremost by (representative samples of) authentic language data, and that a solid linguistic hypothesis and theoretical claims should be based on a thorough description of these data with regard to the phenomenon under investigation (2010: 100)
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