Applications of corpus linguistics in language education: teacher, editor, and assessment developer perspectives

Curry, Niall ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4471-6794 and Mark, Geraldine (2024) Applications of corpus linguistics in language education: teacher, editor, and assessment developer perspectives. Research Notes. ISSN 1756-509X (In Press)

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Abstract

In published language teaching materials, norms relating to written language often dominate at the expense of spoken language, despite a perennial request from learners for more ‘conversation’ in materials. One of the reasons for this spoken deficit might lie in the fact that the features characteristic of everyday spoken language do not reflect the rather neat syllabi expected by teachers and learners, globally. Moreover, there are deeply held opinions relating to usage and acceptability of such features of spoken language, which are often seen as ungrammatical or overly complex. As a result, features of spoken conversation are often missing from mainstream materials. To explore this deficit, this paper draws on the findings from a corpus-based conversation analysis of spontaneous spoken English to inform qualitative workshops and focus groups with ELT teachers, materials editors, and assessment developers. In so doing, this paper offers a multifaceted perspective on the affordances of corpus linguistics for ELT materials development from these core language teaching stakeholders. Overall, this study engages with a set of perspectives on ELT materials that, heretofore, have never been studied together. Furthermore, the focus on corpus linguistics offers a valuable opportunity to address the shortcomings of the ongoing corpus revolution and to develop strategies for exploiting corpora better for the future of ELT materials development.