Using corpora to explore varieties of English

Abstract

The global spread of English means that students are likely to encounter varieties of the language other than those taught in the classroom. An understanding of English language variation offers students valuable insights into the cultures of different communities and promotes intercultural understanding. Students can access information about the vocabularies of certain varieties of English (e.g. British and American) in dictionaries, but this is more difficult to do with grammatical structures or phrases and varieties of English that receive less attention in the classroom. In this series of activities, students learn to use the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) to explore lexical and grammatical features that are characteristic of different varieties of English. Students work with subcorpora to compare the frequency with which certain words and phrases are used in different English-speaking countries and learn to interpret results by developing an understanding of normalised frequency. The lesson can be adapted to explore any variety of English represented in GloWbE.