Contexts: the Background, Development and Trialling of a Concordance-based CALL Program
Tim Johns · 2014
This chapter aims to consider how some of the basic approaches developed for the Remedial Grammar materials might be incorporated in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) program that could be used by students as a supplement to the classroom sessions. Contexts is a CALL Learning program which has its origin in work undertaken at Birmingham University since 1987/1988 involving the rewriting of materials for the Remedial Grammar course offered by the English for Overseas Students Unit. These materials are based on examples of authentic usage recovered from a corpus by means of a concordancer. The aim has been to exclude invented examples of English as far as possible, whether for presentation or for practice. The program is available, with the assistance of the University’s Centre for Computer-based Learning, on the campus high-speed network so that students can access and work with it in a cluster in or near to their own department or faculty.