Using Corpora for Teaching Grammar
Dilin Liu, Yaochen Deng, Shuqiong Wu · 2024
In the past few decades, there has been a rapid increase in corpus use for second language learning and teaching, especially the learning and teaching of grammar and vocabulary. This is because corpus data provide learners with not only ample authentic language input for learning real live grammar (rather than dead prescriptive grammar) but also various opportunities for discovery learning that has been shown to be more engaging and effective than teacher explanation-based learning. Drawing on existing classroom research and practices, this chapter introduces the most common and useful corpus-driven classroom activities for teaching grammar. Specifically, the chapter first provides an overview that covers the basic key concepts and terms involved, including what a corpus is, what types of valuable language information that corpora can offer for helping teach grammar more effectively, and how to retrieve and use such corpus information for successful grammar teaching in the classroom. It then discusses the principles, techniques, and step-by-step procedures for (1) designing or selecting appropriate corpora; (2) searching and retrieving from a corpus useful target language data for one’s teaching objectives; and (3) developing effective corpus-based teaching materials and activities, with some being deductive and the majority being inductive learning in nature, based on the specific needs of one’s students. Next, the chapter presents several specific activities for teaching some basic grammatical rules and usage patterns, including the use of articles, prepositions, subject-verb agreement, and structural and usage differences in grammar between spoken and written language. Implications of such corpus-driven teaching activities for grammar teaching in the classroom are also discussed. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the main challenges involved in using corpora for teaching grammar and strategies for overcoming such challenges. A short list of publications as essential reading is also provided.