In the future I will use corpora in my classroom: is it really applicable?

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess in-service teachers’ pedagogical skills that enable them to exploit corpora successfully in their daily teaching. The teachers attended an intensive training course and were then asked to submit end-of-course projects. The projects involved designing lesson plans based on the teaching contexts and implementing corpora into these plans according to their contexts. The project outcomes revealed that the submitted plans were preliminary and basic in terms of using corpus resources and activities. However, the teachers were genuinely keen to implement corpora into their daily teaching. The teachers applied corpora as an additional teaching methodology and in supplementary activities after explaining the learning units’ aims, periods, foci, and so on. They used corpora as hands-on supplementary sources of information, which was understandable for early application. The teachers seemed willing to implement corpora in their classrooms and needed no further training, but they might still need more guidance and feedback on the first-time application, which could lead to successful implementation.