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Corpus Linguistics and Writing Instruction

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Demystifying Corpus Linguistics for English Language Teaching

Abstract

This chapter discusses the ways that corpora can be used to inform second language (L2) writing pedagogy. There are two common approaches to using corpora in L2 classrooms: using corpus research to inform curriculum design and materials development (e.g., Cortes, Corpus Tools for Writing Teachers. In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Teaching Writing, ed. Diane Belcher and Alan Hirvela. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0553; Reppen, Enhancing Language Teaching: How Corpus Linguistics Can Help. Corpus Linguistics Research 2: 25–32) and teaching learners to use corpora themselves to discover features in the target language (e.g., Friginal, Developing Research Report Writing Skills Using Corpora. English for Specific Purposes 32(4), 208–220, 2013). As drawing pedagogical implications has been an important focus of corpus linguistic research over the years, the chapter begins by discussing examples of findings from corpus-based studies that may be practical for writing teachers. Next, research on allowing language learners to interact with corpora directly is discussed. Some practical illustrations of how to apply these two approaches are provided, and potential challenges in using corpora in writing teaching are addressed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the benefits of using corpora when teaching writing, in spite of the potential challenges.

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Friginal, E., Cox, A., Udell, R. (2023). Corpus Linguistics and Writing Instruction. In: Harrington, K., Ronan, P. (eds) Demystifying Corpus Linguistics for English Language Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11220-1_5

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