A Corpus-based Approach To College English Teaching And Research

Corpus linguistics has revolutionized all aspects of language study, of which foreign language pedagogy is no exception. There are three focuses of the convergence between teaching and corpora (Leech1997), namely, indirect use of corpora in teaching (e.g. reference publishing, materials development, language testing, and teacher training), direct use of corpora in teaching (e.g. how to exploit corpora in class, how to teach students to exploit corpora and teaching corpus linguistics as an academic subject), development of teaching-oriented corpora (e.g. Language for specific purpose (LSP) and learner corpora).This dissertation focuses on two issues of the direct use of corpora in teaching: how to exploit corpora in class and how to teach students to exploit corpora. The rationale behind this study lies in the fact that the potential of corpora in teaching or learning has long been realized but not widely used by foreign language teachers and learners, not to say exploit the corpora in real classroom teaching, which begs further research. The study defines college students as the objects of research, and carries out two experimental studies in6weeks, with one carried out in an authentic classroom of sophomores in ZUCC where1myself was a student teacher, and with the other conducted among a voluntary group of graduates and post-graduates together with me as an instructor and supervisor. The research adopts the BNC Baby corpus together with Antconc. Its goal is to ascertain whether it is feasible to use the corpus approach directly in real class, and how far the LSP (Language for Specific Purposes) learners can gain benefits from corpora in their writing. The data is collected from the questionnaire, interview, test scores and the student teacher’s self-reflection and then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively using the SPSS16.0software.This paper draws the conclusion that it is feasible to put corpora in real class and the LSP learners can gain benefits from corpora in writing; the effect, on the other hand, depends on a range of factors such as learners’motivation, language proficiency, the teachers’teaching plan, layout, the selection of the corpus, etc. Therefore, it is suggested to treat the corpus-based approach as a complement to traditional methods.It is also suggested that teacher-oriented teaching is better for intermediate foreign language learners and a proper corpus should be selected for the advanced LSP learners; it is useful to provide more training or seminar for teachers and English-major students; more collaborative research should be carried out by teachers and researchers, etc.This study has its limitations, but it is hoped that it will provide implications on language pedagogy and the future research.