In conversation with Profs Mike McCarthy and Tony McEnery: Chapter 3. Looking back on 25 years of TaLC

McCarthy, Michael; McEnery, Tony; Mark, Geraldine; Pérez-Paredes, Pascual

doi:10.1075/scl.102.03mcc

Part of

Beyond Concordance Lines: Corpora in language education
Edited by Pascual Pérez-Paredes and Geraldine Mark
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 102] 2021
► pp. 57–74

Chapter 3
Looking back on 25 years of TaLC

In conversation with Profs Mike McCarthy and Tony McEnery

Michael McCarthy | University of Nottingham

Tony McEnery | Lancaster University

Geraldine Mark | Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick

Pascual Pérez-Paredes | Universidad de Murcia

This chapter is the result of a conversation between Professors Tony McEnery and Michael McCarthy, two of the greatest names in the fields of corpus linguistics and the corpus-based analysis and teaching of the English language. They share their views and experiences of the areas discussed in this volume, including the relationship between DDL and SLA research, the role of formulaic language, spoken language and pragmatics as areas of potential applications of learner corpus research (LCR) methods, the role of frequency in language learning and teaching and, among others, annotation.

Keywords: data-driven learning (DDL) and second language acquisition (SLA), barriers to DDL, formulaic language, pragmatics, frequency, annotation

Article outline

Introduction and background
Use of linguistic knowledge, directly and indirectly in the language classroom
Perspectives on terminology
Learners bring implicit linguistic experience and use
Learning contexts, cultural trends, methodologies and legacies
The role and relevance of corpus linguistics and frequency in current pedagogies
Frequency as arbitrator
Bridging the gap between corpus linguistics and second language acquisition
Challenges of looking beyond the immediately discoverable
Looking to the future for discovery and insight
Overcoming barriers to DDL: New skills, context and personalisation
References