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Multiple Affordances of Language Corpora for Data-driven Learning
Edited by Agnieszka Leńko-Szymańska and Alex Boulton
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 69] 2015
► pp. 129–154

Same task, different corpus

The role of personal corpora in EAP classes

| Oxford University Language Centre

This paper presents an approach to incorporating corpus work in multidisciplinary EAP classes whereby each student builds a personal corpus from research articles in their discipline. Although students work with different corpora, all perform the same teacher-guided tasks, designed to investigate key functions of written academic discourse. The potential of this ‘same task, different corpus’ approach is illustrated by showing both the individuality of student findings and how they are enhanced by being compared with other students’ discipline-specific data and with established general research findings. The paper discusses students’ use of several corpus tools in AntConc (Concordance, Collocates, Word List, Concordance Plot) and suggests that all have valuable pedagogical applications. Task procedures important to successful corpus pedagogy are also highlighted.

Keywords: academic writing, corpus pedagogy, corpus tools, DDL, DIY corpora, EAP
Published online: 13 May 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.69.07cha
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