Not Just For Reference

Dictionaries and corpora as language acquisition tools

Some recent errors in my students’ work• “… in the stove.”• “… swore revenge to …”• “I’ll introduce about …”• “Almost people like …”• “… sum dishes.”

Everyone knows how to use a dictionary, right?• Monolingual dictionary: Look up meanings• Bilingual dictionary: Look up translations• Would a dictionary help with correcting this

sentence?• Put the pot in the stove.

• Would a grammar book help? Grammar books usually have sections for prepositions of place or time which treat prepositions in general, abstract terms.

Specialist Learner Dictionaries• Monolingual dictionary entry for "stove"

• Bilingual dictionary entry for "stove"

• Learner's dictionary entry for "stove"

• Learner dictionaries contain information language learners need that is often missing or hard to find in other kinds of dictionaries and grammars.

Non-time and Non-place Prepositions• “Then he swore revenge to his enemy.”• Standard dictionaries and grammar books are not

very helpful for finding out what preposition will collocate with revenge in the sentence above.

• Learner's dictionary entry

Expert Dictionary Users• Students can be shown how different kinds of

dictionaries have different kinds of information.• Students can be taught how to effectively use

learner dictionaries by completing tasks that require them to find the kinds of linguistic information provided in learner dictionaries.

• Expose them to problems or usage that they would not notice on their own.

Dictionaries and Language Acquisition• Effective use of dictionaries takes learner’s beyond

using them only to look up meanings or L1:L2 equivalents.

• It engages them in higher-order thinking.• They develop noticing and inferencing skills, see

examples of authentic use, and discover common patterns and forms.

• The kinds of information that learner dictionaries provide is essential for students to develop fluency.

Corpus (plural: corpora)• A corpus is a collection of language-in-use that is

representative of a language variety, dialect, style, genre, etc.

• Corpora do not directly describe anything about the language. Rather, they can be searched, sorted, and analyzed to reveal things about language that are otherwise difficult to know or understand.

Bilingual Corpora• A bilingual corpus or, more accurately, a parallel corpus

is a collection of L1 texts and their translations into an L2.

• There is some evidence that parallel corpora are better suited for language learners than monolingual corpora.

• For example, if the focus of study is a particular grammar pattern, parallel corpora allow students to quickly get the gist of a concordance line (they don’t need to know every word in the target language lines) and focus on the pattern in question.

Corpus Example • “Next, I will introduce about their traditional cuisine.”• Instead of telling students that “about” is an error in

this sentence, let them see and make their own conclusions.

• Online parallel newspaper corpus (English and Japanese)

• Use guiding questions to help students make sense of the data. For example: “There is an error in the phrase will introduce about. Look at these lines from newspapers. Can you figure out what the error is?”

• This is more likely to result in deeper learning and retention.

Similar (Hybrid?) Tools• “The menu features sum dishes.”• The student was thinking of how to express 和 in English.• Bilingual dictionary entry• Linguee entry• Exposure to different possible translations.• Exposure to real-world uses of the search term(s).• Exposure to grammatical context.

Not just referencing, but actively using reasoning skills to make linguistic choices.

Pedagogic Parallel Corpus• “Almost people like ice cream.”• A pedagogic parallel corpus is a parallel corpus that has

been designed for educational use, not research purposes.

• English and Japanese pedagogic parallel corpus• Students can use a pedagogic parallel corpus and

guided questions to determine what the error is and how to remedy it. They can also be exposed to several other ways in which “almost” is used, deepening their knowledge of the word and its grammar.

Anticipating Needs• Is the explanation of the

grammar point unclear or complicated?

• Does it use a lot of metalanguage?

• Are there enough examples?

• Is it contextualized?

Data-Driven Learning (DDL)• DDL is a method where students analyze language and form

their own conclusions about rules and patterns. For the grammar point on the previous slide, I had my students use the SCoRE corpus and I prepared guiding questions to help them analyze the data.

• Step 1: They opened SCoRE’s Pattern Browser tool and selected the ‘if + past tense’ pattern at the intermediate level.

• Step 2: They read several example sentences (with Japanese translations).

• Step 3: They answered guided questions.

• Step 4: They determined the rules, and I confirmed them.

A Little More Detail• The guided questions (and tasks) were things like: “What

kind of verb comes after ‘would’ in these sentences?”, “List 5 verbs that come after ‘would’”, and “Are these sentences describing real or imagined situations?”

• The conclusions also may be guided: “This grammar pattern is for talking about ------- situations”, “If the clause uses ‘if’, then the following verb should be in the ------- form”, etc. Or they can be left open-ended for the students to describe how they understand the grammar pattern.

• Please see the handout for more details about this activity.

Some Other Features and ‘Can-Do’ Aspects• User-friendliness• Frequency information• Collocations• Encounter words in a variety of contexts• Compare multiple senses of a single word• Pre-teaching vocabulary or structures• Explore cognates, loanwords, and false friends• Explore connotation and semantic prosody• Error correction• Supplement activities with concentrated doses of

vocabulary/grammar study• Use these tools for the questions students care about

ResourcesEnglish-English Online Learner Dictionaries

• Cambridge Learner's Dictionary

• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries

• Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

• Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary

Parallel Corpora (English and Japanese)

• WebParaNews (News Corpus)

• Sentence Corpus of Remedial English (Pedagogic Corpus)

Bilingual Dictionary with Bilingual Translation ‘Corpus’

• Linguee

Sources1. Chujo, K., Kobayashi, Y., Mizumoto, A., & Oghigian, K. (2016). ‘Exploring the Effectiveness of Combined

Web-based Corpus Tools for Beginner EFL DDL’, Linguistics and Literature Studies, 4(4): 262-274.

2. Chujo, K., Oghigian, K., & Nishigaki, C. (2012). ‘Beginner level EFL DDL using a parallel web-based concordancer’, In Pan-Asian Conference on Language Teaching and Learning (PAC) 2012 and 9th FEELTA International Conference, Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia.

3. Frankenberg-Garcia, A. (2012). ‘Integrating corpora with everyday language teaching’, Input, Process, and Product: Development in Teaching and Language Corpora, Brno: Masryk University Press, 36-53.

4. Frankenberg-Garcia, A. (2011). ‘Beyond L1-L2 Equivalents: Where Do Users of English as a Foreign Language Turn for Help?’, International Journal of Lexicography, 24(1): 97-123.

5. Minematsu, K. (2014). ‘Using a Corpus in an EFL Classroom to Develop Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge’, The Tsuru University Review, 79: 143-136.

6. Nurmukhamedov, U. (2012). ‘Online English-English Learner Dictionaries Boost Word Learning’, English Teaching Forum, 50(4): 10-15.

7. Quinn, C. (2015). ‘Training L2 writers to reference corpora as a self-correction tool’, ELT Journal, 69(2): 165-177.