Tom Cobb

Is there any measurable learning from hands-on concordancing?

Abstract This study attempts to identify a specific learning effect that can be unambiguously attributed to the use of concordance software by language learners. A base-level hypothesis for learning from concordances is proposed, that a computer concordance might simulate and potentially rationalize off-line vocabulary acquisition by presenting new words in several contexts. To test this idea, an experimental lexical tutor was developed to introduce new words to subjects, either through concordances or through other sources of lexical information. In a series of tests involving transfer of word knowledge to novel contexts, a small but consistent gain was found for words introduced through concordances.

Applying constructivism: A test for the learner-as-scientist

Constructivist learning theory predicts that knowledge encoded from data by learners themselves will be more flexible, transferable, and useful than knowledge encoded for them by experts and transmitted to them by an instructor or other delivery agent. If this prediction is correct, then learners should be modeled as scientists and use the reasoning and technologies of scientists to construct their own knowledge. However, it cannot be taken for granted that the prediction is correct, or correct in every knowledge domain. The present study attempts to establish conditions in which the prediction can be operationalized and tested. It reports on the adaptation of constructivist principles to instructional design in a particular domain, second language vocabulary acquisition. Students learning English for academic purposes in the Sultanate of Oman followed one of two approaches to vocabulary expansion, learning pre-encoded dictionary definitions of words, or constructing definitions for themselves using an adapted version of the computational tools of lexicographers. After 12 weeks, both groups were equal in definitional knowledge of target words, but lexicography group students were more able to transfer their word knowledge to novel contexts.

Classroom applications of corpus analysis

Corpus linguistics is almost by definition applied linguistics, as was tacitly acknowledged when the American Association of Applied Corpus Linguistics (AAACL) dropped its third A in 2008. Its methodologies can be applied far beyond the discipline itself (cf. McEnery et al., 2006: 8), not least in language teaching and learning, where its influence has been of three main types. The first lies in improved descriptions of language varieties and features which can inform aspects of the language to be taught; the second makes corpora and tools for analysing them available to the teacher; the third puts them directly into the learners hands. We begin this chapter with an overview of all three types before concentrating mainly on the third type in the final sections, since other chapters in this volume deal in more detail with corpora and vocabulary, lexicography and phraseology, pedagogical materials and translation.