Using Corpus Linguistics in Materials Development and Teacher Education

Abstract

In published ELT materials, norms relating to written language often dominate, at the expense of spoken language. This dominance of writing typically arises as the features characteristic of everyday spoken language do not reflect the rather neat syllabi expected by teachers and students, globally. Furthermore, there are deeply held opinions relating to the usage and acceptability of features of spoken language. As a result, features of spoken language are often not represented in mainstream materials, despite a perennial request from learners for more ‘conversation’. One potential means to meet such a request is by employing corpus linguistics and spoken language research to inform ELT materials development and teacher education. Responding to this issue, this paper draws on findings from a corpus-based conversation analysis of spontaneous spoken British English to conduct workshops on materials development. The goal of these workshops is to gain a comprehensive perspective on the affordances of corpus linguistics for ELT materials development from core stakeholders: teachers. Through a grounded theory-based thematic analysis of lesson plans, recorded discussions, and survey responses, the findings of this study demonstrate that teachers find value in corpus linguistics research. Specifically, the teachers’ insights offer recourse for developing strategies for exploiting corpora better in future ELT materials development. Moreover, teachers signalled effective means through which corpus linguistics can be embedded in future teacher education.