Constructivist concordancing for EAPwa.amu.edu.pl/~kprzemek/2011 ALL Kaszubski.pdf · Towards integration with Web 2.0 and e-learning: – CMC element in DDL fuelled by trends in

Constructivist concordancing for EAP

Przemysław Kaszubski

School of EnglishAdam Mickiewicz University

Poznan, Poland

TOC

• IFAConc: What and Why?• IFAConc: How?

– Before and After 2010– Quantity and Quality– What has worked (so far); What has not (yet) ...

• What next?

IFAConc: What?• e-learning prototype• ESP / EAP assistant concordancer• for computer-savyy and computer-naive students• task-based noticing• relevant cross-corpus patterns• KWiC concordances and simple statistical counts• design feature – hyperlinkability

– corpora searches with unique URLs– history of searches – filterable, bookmarkable, linkable

Limitations

• Not a “Mark Davies” application:– Small / restricted corpora– Graphics / layout not top-notch– Can be slow

• All these (and more) add to my challenge ...

IFAConc: Why?• QUALITY: Guidance towards more natural use of (relevant) English:

– away from EFL learner-like, towards native-user like

– away from student-like (apprentice), towards professional-like (expert)

– raising / restoring awareness: language, metalanguage

– monitoring and assisting authentication

– registering needs and trends in tool use

• QUANTITY: Integration with teaching / marking tasks = more opportunities

– for training

– for learning / revising knowledge

– for authenticating

– quantity important – cf. U-shape effect

• Towards integration with Web 2.0 and e-learning:

– CMC element in DDL fuelled by trends in social networking (soc. constructivism)

– :: better students might become T assistants

– tool for action research and teacher development (teacher authentication)

Authentication with IFAConc: How ?

• Authentication:– re-contextualisation, adaptation

– NOT simple copy-paste

(cf. Gavioli and Aston 2001)

• Issues:

– How many students, how often, and under what conditions will be able, and inclined to, authenticate?

• Quantity & Quality– DDL tools needed to help maximize / optimize authentication

• regular syllabus tasks• peripheral learning (corpus consultations) tasks

Some stats 2008-2011Users Searches Annotations S / U A / U A / S

2008-9ZaoLec 141 10821 508 76,7 3,6 4,7%

2009-10Zao3 106 3287 169 31,0 1,6 5,1%

2010-11Zao3 115 9322 956 81,1 8,3 10,3%

2009MA2AcDis 28 891 64 31,8 2,3 7,2%

2009a2MAAcDc 22 872 86 39,6 3,9 9,9%

2010-11AcDc 21 1746 135 83,1 6,4 7,7%

IFAConc How? (Some) typical tasks

• (initial training)• links in distributed EAP material• (feedback links in students’ texts)

– self-correction decision(s) required• (personal recommendations for searches and tasks)• 1-2 annotations to do per week:

– prompted by IFAConc (starter page, RSS in Moodle, etc.)– selected by student

• T-S discussion / co-annotation of some findings• (T-S-S co-annotation of common issues)

– informed by S monitoring• (personal EAP / ESP corpora – compile and use)• (sharing of personal corpora)

How ? – Some examples and details

Resources / Help / Self-training

Example comment and reply

Corpora Search: Before 2010 (starter)

Corpora Search: After 2010 (starter)

Corpora Search: Before 2010 (result)

Corpora Search: After 2010 (result)

Context view: Before 2010

Context view: After 2010

Feedback linkBy comparison of

Annotated feedback link: after 2010

NN* , like

actually, this case not successfully resolved

User monitoring (1)

User monitoring (2)

User monitoring (3)

Teacher annotation / authentication (1)

(2)

Personal and Shared corpora

To be able to add a personal corpus:

• the corpus should be no greater than about 50,000 words

• the corpus must be in plain-text format (.txt)

• the corpus must be all in a single file

• the first two lines of the corpus file must be left blank.

Not much success yet..

Successes (so far)

• Adding more interactive features has affected:QUANTITY:

– More students search more and annotate more

– More students continue also after course

QUALITY

– Students annotate more complex queries

– More interesting T-S discussions / co-annotations

• Thus:– Better chances for successful S-S group involvement

– More student-coauthored material likely to feed Shared History

What next ... / In progress... (1)• Exploit History to refine / subclassify link-driven starting prompts:

– learner overuse / underuse patterns ; disciplinary language (positive vs negative)

– positioning / subgenres / academic functions: patterns associated with citing, descriptions of methods etc.

• Expand / enhance corpora search interactive options:

– other users (today) have searched for...

– improved pointers to related searches

– the most popular searches (for this search category) ...

• Improve learner monitoring / reporting

– eg. History threading

• explore other / more specific S-S collaboration tasks:

– concordance-illustrated usage guide co-edited on google docs, wiki etc.

– improve / explore / exploit personal / shared corpus experience

Sample: Likely overuse / underuse cases

For critical contextual evaluation / authentication etc

Sample: Positive / negative priming candidates for critical literary papers

(esp. as opposed to linguistics)

What next (2)

• Extend reference:– plug in API’s from other (big) (general) corpus

seach engines and dictionaries

– Maybe you can help with these?

Some Bibliography

[AWL] Coxhead, Averil. 2000. "A new Academic Word List", TESOL Quarterly 34, 2: 213-238.

Gavioli, Laura and Guy Aston. 2001. "Enriching reality: Language corpora in language pedagogy", ELT Journal 55, 3: 238-246.

Mishan, Freda. 2004. "Authenticating corpora for language learning: a problem and its resolution", ELT Journal 58, 3: 219-27.

[AFL] Simpson-Vlach, Rita and Nick C. Ellis. 2010. "An Academic Formulas List: New methods in phraseology research", Applied Linguistics 31,4: 487–512.

Tribble, Christopher. 2002. "Corpora and corpus analysis: New windows on academic writing", in: John Flowerdew (ed.), Academic discourse, 131- 149.

Widdowson, Henry G. 1998. "Communication and community: The pragmatics of ESP", English for Specific Purposes 17, 1: 3-14.