Applying Corpora To English Classroom

Corpora and corpus linguistics are becoming mainstream of linguistics, language teaching and linguistic studies, although they are still new rising branches of studies. According to the Basic Requirements for the High Vocational and Junior College English Teaching, this thesis discusses the design and construction of a practical teaching corpus for the 5-year vocational college students. Functioning both as a pedagogic corpus and as a learner corpus, it aims to help teachers adapt to the change in pedagogical ideas, namely, from a teacher-oriented approach to a student-oriented one. All the materials such as texts, students'compositions, test papers (A/B), models for practical writing, news, stories and so on are collected, classified, input to the computer system, annotated, marked or tagged, and then stored in different files in the form of plain texts. Thus with the help of the software, AntConc, teachers can easily get more suitable examples from the course books, and from reference materials such as news, stories, and other textbooks that are saved in the corpus when they are preparing for lessons and teaching. Also, they are in a better position to predict possible learner errors and difficulties by studying and analyzing students'compositions. On the other hand, students can gain new knowledge by reviewing what has been learned through the use of more examples and recurring formulaic expressions. They can also learn to speak English instead of remaining silent because they can neither understand others'words nor express their own ideas by introducing authentic communication among native speakers, say, mini-dialogues, into the corpus. With the help of the software, AntConc, students can compare the different usages of words, imitate and learn to understand others and to express themselves simply first, and then learn to voice their ideas accurately step by step. Besides, weak students can benefit from the audiovisual materials in the little corpus, while top students can make full use of the abundant supply of materials, study independently, and have fun. In conclusion, utilizing corpus in the classroom appeals more to students and facilitates learning.