Using corpora in language classrooms has proven to be an effective tool in teaching vocabulary, grammar and language use to learners of English as a second/foreign language. So teachers have to learn about using corpora for bringing it to teach students have good English skills. Activities will aim at developing students' vocabulary, grammar, knowledge of idiomatic expressions and pragmatic constraints. All activities discussed in this paper could be used in any language classroom even those classrooms that are not equipped with computers.
Corpus-based Activities and Ideas for Material Design
👯Elementary students: Collocations: make/do
💗Verb pairing game
The verb pairing game can be done after the teacher highlights some collocations to the students. After that, students will be divided into two groups. Group 1 will have some corpus-derived sentences without the verbs make and do. Group 2 will have the verbs make or do. Students in both groups will stand in lines facing each other. The ones carrying verbs will take turns trying to pair their verbs with the sentences the other group has.
💗Computer cloze activity
To integrate the use of technology in our classes, computer cloze activities might be used to help
students practice the uses of both verbs and to learn their collocations. The teacher might prepare a
passage or a number of sentences on Microsoft Word with every do and make being deleted. Students
should complete the passages and then print them out for the teacher. Another way is to use peer-evaluation
first before answers are discussed in class.
💗Screen shot analysis
After introducing the idea of corpus in class, a data show could be used to illustrate how frequent nouns occur with certain verbs and not others.
👯Intermediate students: Modal verbs
💝Contextual Analysis
Students will be given a number of sentences obtained from any of the two corpora used in this
analysis. They should try to analyze the context of each to see why one modal verb is used rather than
the other. For example, students could be given the following sentence and asked why have to is used
instead of must.
💝Cloze activities
Students will be given a worksheet with some sentences from a certain corpus. Modal verbs will be
deleted. They have to fill in the blanks with the modal verb they think is most appropriate to use. After
they finish, they will compare their answers with a partner. The teacher will then display the correct
answers to the whole class and they can all discuss why certain modal verbs are used.
💝Spot the error activity
Students will be given a worksheet that includes a number of sentences with wrong modal verbs.
Students will work in pairs trying to spot the error and decide on the best modal verb to use in each
sentence. Results can be either discussed as a whole class activity or in pairs.
💝Multiple-choices
Students will be given sentences obtained from a certain corpus. For each sentence, 3 choices will be
provided as explanations of the meaning of the sentence.
💝Express yourself
A number of sentences that express suggestion/obligation will be written on small folded pieces of
paper. The teacher will then write a situation on the board. Students will randomly draw pieces of paper
and read the sentences on them. Some sentences will be relevant to the situation on the board and some
will not. This is a fun activity that exposes students to a large number of sentences using modal verbs.
Students can negotiate the meaning of the sentences and decide which can be used and which cannot.
👯Upper intermediate students: Phrasal verbs
💘Cloze activity
Students will be given a worksheet with some sentences from the corpus. Phrasal verbs will be deleted.
They have to fill in the blanks with the family-related phrasal verb that is suitable to the text. After they
finish, they will compare their answers with a partner. The teacher will then display the correct answers
to the whole class and they can all discuss why certain phrasal verbs are used.
👯Advanced students: Idiomatic Expressions:
💕Concordance Analysis
After training students on how to use online corpora, you can ask them to search for the idiomatic
expressions and analyze the concordance lines to see how these idioms are contextualized and used by
native speakers.
💕Pragmatics: Situation analysis
This activity could be done after students are introduced to the different uses and meanings of
apologies. For this activity, students will be divided into groups. Each group will receive corpus-based
dialogues on flash cards, and students will decide the meaning and the level of sincerity of the apology.
Although using corpora in language teaching is challenging, it has a big potential in EFL classrooms. If
teachers are trained on how to design suitable corpus-based tasks, they can help their students get
exposed to a broader framework of how English is used for communication by native speakers. Certain
points to bear in mind while designing corpus-based tasks include the ability level of the students,
cultural and educational backgrounds and the age group of the students. It is also recommended to use
online corpora as they are available for anybody at any given time. In class a specialized corpus is
needed, EFL instructors and researchers need to make sure it is available at their institutions. The
researchers’ next plan is to examine some of the activities listed above using a more in-depth approach
to highlight the benefits, challenges and drawbacks of each.
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