Using Corpora in Teaching Languages to Enhance Competency in English as a Foreign Language with Focus on English for Business and Economics

Abstract

The necessity to be competent in understanding and interpreting written as well as spoken English language is vital in our society. There are many methods and approaches set to confront this particular demand, one of which corpus linguistics addresses in a highly efficient way. Corpora can be used to study purposes with which words are used in a text and the circumstances under which they are used. This work considers the advantages of using corpora, carefully and meticulously designed collections of written texts, in teaching a foreign language, thus promoting cross-cultural competency. Recent development in communication and the requirements for growing intercultural cooperation bring demands on today’s society to be able to communicate in an effective way. Languages are the most prominent part of one’s culture, that is why it is imperative to master them as well as possible to avoid ambiguities and misunderstandings. This paper shows an introduction of a possible approach to accomplish this task, demonstrating methods and views upon a tiny fraction of features of language utilizing available data concentrating on some aspects of using an online corpus, namely the British National Corpus, to provide a communicative context in language learning, focusing on English as a second language with special emphasis on English for business and economics.