Transcript LAGB Education Committee Leeds, September 3rd 2010

LAGB Education Committee
Leeds, September 3rd 2010
Using corpora in secondary English teaching
Dan Clayton: Research Fellow, Survey of English Usage, UCL
Overview
•Some background
•Examples of corpus tools in English classrooms
•A level English Language
•The Teaching English Grammar in Schools project
Some background
• The use of corpora has
been fairly restricted in
most English classrooms
until recently.
• In a broader sense, bodies
of language have been
used for many years:
literary texts, dictionaries
etc.
• Secondary English in UK:
historically much more
focus on Literature than
Language
• Little potential for
investigative approaches
into language until recent
curriculum developments.
Examples of corpus tools for classroom:
Teachit’s Cruncher
• Teachit’s Cruncher has
proved a good intro to the
potential of corpus work in
the classroom.
• Paste in own text and it
crunches it:
defamiliarisation;
patterning; new approach
Education For Leisure – Carol Ann Duffy
Text of poem
Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets
I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
we did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.
I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.
I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
For signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.
There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
he cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
the pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.
Crunched version
a a a a a a against all am am am am am an and
and and and and another another anything anything
appreciate arm at at autograph avoids be being bog
boredom bread-knife breathe budgie but cat cat
chain chance change could cuts day dial did don’t
down education enough fly fly for for fortnight
genius genius get glass glitter go god going going
going goldfish good grey had half has have he he’s
hidden i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i ignored in in in into is is is
is is it it it itself kill kill knows language language left
leisure man me me miles my my my name nothing
now of of off on on once ordinary our out out
panicking pavements play pour pull radio school
see shakespeare signing something something’s
sort squash stirring streets suddenly superstar
talent talking tell that that the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the the there they thumb
to to to to to to today today today touch town two
walk was we window with with with world world write
your
Teachit’s Syntex
Syntex first screen
First stanza of poem
A level English Language
• The growth of A level English Language (at one point in the mid-2000s
being the fastest growing A level) has opened up more interesting
opportunities for corpus work.
• Investigation is actively encouraged (and built into the A level
coursework).
• There is emphasis on the study of naturally occurring language.
• Teachit, especially Chris Warren, Julie Blake and Tim Shortis, have
been early pioneers, but others have made inroads into using corpora
in the classroom. The recent BAAL/CUP corpus special interest group
conference had many useful presentations from teachers.
AS level English Language
AQA A spec
AQA B spec
• Investigating Representations
AS unit:
• Critical discourse analysis of
self-selected texts on an issue,
event, individual, social group
or institution.
• Corpus tools very helpful for
looking at uses of particular
patterns of language which
create representations: first
step in a more detailed
analysis.
• Categorising Texts AS unit:
• Text type/genre features of
materials can be taught using
corpora and exploring patterns
e.g. differences between
spoken and written
instructional language, or
distribution of verb forms
between recipe books and
fictional writing.
A level English Language
• All exam boards include a Language Investigation as part
of the A2 course.
• Students are encouraged to devise their own research
questions.
• Investigations into spoken language can make use of
corpora, so statistical analyses of features can be carried
out, while text extracts can be filleted for further analysis.
Teaching English Grammar in Schools
• This is a knowledge
transfer project based at
UCL, in partnership with
Camden (our local LEA).
• Aim is to create a webbased platform for
teaching (and developing
the teaching of) English
grammar in KS 3-5.
From ICE to VLE
Project objectives
Grammar is often viewed with a
mixture of suspicion, scepticism
and fear by many teachers:
suspicion that grammar is just a dry
way of learning a narrow, featurespotting approach to language;
scepticism over whether teaching
grammar actually helps pupils’
reading and writing; fear that
grammar is scary and that they
don’t know enough of it.
We hope to be able to support
teachers in finding ways to make
grammar teaching practical,
dynamic and accessible, but most
of all relevant, because the
language we’ll be using is all
sourced directly from examples of
actual usage.
suspicion
scepticism
fear
From classroom to corpus

School VLE
ICE-GB
Grammar for
Schools website
Classroom
From corpus to classroom
The early stages of the project have
involved working on classroom
resources that use dynamic
examples from ICE-GB to illustrate
key grammatical concepts.
We’ve worked to integrate lessons
and tasks on grammatical concepts
with what teachers actually do in the
English classroom: working with
literature texts, media texts, the
spoken voice, creative writing,
problem solving and miniinvestigation work.
Grammar is not being taught in
isolation, but as integral to the
systematic study of English.
Some examples of resources
Key Stage 3 – Whodunit?
A simple introduction to forensic linguistics, in which
students are asked to solve a crime by looking for
language clues.
Whodunit?
Whodunit?
Whodunit?
• This lesson can lead to a number of different areas: early work on key
differences between written and spoken language, discussions about
standard and non-standard forms, register and appropriacy, and
discussion of a range of grammatical features and how we might identify
them .
• In the Year 9 class where this lesson was piloted, the students seemed
surprised that grammar could have a “real world” application.
• The corpus is used to source dynamic examples of some of the features
noted in the task and to provide further material for analysis.
Some examples of resources
• Key Stage 5 – A level
English Language
• He Said She Said:
researching gender and
language
• An introduction to using
ICE-GB in testing out
popular stereotypes about
male and female
conversation styles.
He Said She Said
• This resource is designed to help A level students formulate sensible
research questions about male and female spoken styles.
• Taking discourse markers, tag questions, adverbial intensifiers and
precise colour terms as examples, the students are guided through a
series of searches designed to help them think about research
methodology.
• As with the Whodunit task for KS3, the emphasis is very much on
problem-solving and using grammar in a practical way. For example,
students are given an extract from Robin Lakoff’s Language and a
Woman’s Place and asked to test out one of her observations against
data in ICE-GB.
Conclusions
• Corpora have the potential to make English teaching more data-driven
and investigative in approach...but...
• we have to perform a tricky balancing act between the extremes of
experiential and didactic learning.
• We know that many English teachers come from a Literature
background: they often struggle with grammar and are unfamiliar with
corpus tools and research methodologies.
• We have to boost teachers’ confidence about Language teaching and
prove to them that corpus work can help in the classroom.
Contacts
• Bas Aarts (Professor of English Linguistics and
Principal Investigator on this project)
• Sean Wallis (Senior Research Fellow)
• Dan Clayton (Research Fellow)
[email protected]
• Project page: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/englishusage/projects/grammar-teaching/
• Project blog:
http://teachingenglishgrammarinschools.blogspot.
com/