Corpus, Concordance and Data-Driven Learning

I guess everyone is busy either with work or assignments. For me, my 'battery' is almost flat. I can't wait for the June holidays to be here (don't think many of us will consider the March holidays a real break).

Anyway, in the midst of all the deadlines and work, I managed to squeeze in some time to blog about the previous lesson on 'Corpus, Concordance and Data-Driven Learning'. I won't go into the theoretical aspects as I have to confess... I have not done a single reading yet. What I want to share is the process of how Dr Doyle brought us through the various activities from low-tech to high-tech.

Personally, I find the Multiple-Context Cloze an interesting activity. As I tried out the activity, I must admit, I can't get the answer. I only managed to get it towards the last few clues. It was quite embarrassing for me not to be able to get the answer but it is an engaging activity where lessons, such as finding clues from the context, prepositions, connectors etc, could be generated from it. I particularly like the idea where such sentences come from students' compositions. This is a true example of a learner corpus. I will certainly try this out with my class.

The other activity, the use of BNC online to look up words and phrases, is also an interesting one. However, for students to make use of it, especially at the P3 level which I'm taking, it may be a challenge for them. Students may not be able to differentiate between the right and the wrong. Nevertheless, it is still useful if teachers are to use this to faciliate class discussions.

This lesson has widened my perspective of how ICT can be integrated into lessons. It is an effective pedagogy, away from the use of websites where teachers merely do a show-and-tell.