Corpus-aided language pedagogy is one of the central application areas of corpus methodologies, and a test bed for theories of language and learning. This volume provides an overview of current trends, offering methodological and theoretical position statements along with results from empirical studies. The relationship between corpora and learning is examined from complementary perspectives — the study of learner language, the didactic use of corpus findings, and the interaction between corpora and their users. Reflections on current theory and technology open and close the volume.With its focus on the learner and the learning setting, Corpora and Language Learners is addressed to corpus linguists with an interest in learner language, applied linguists wishing to expand their understanding of corpora and their pedagogic potential, and language teachers wishing to critically assess the relevance of work in this field. This volume grew out of selected presentations at the 5th Teaching and Language Corpora conference in Bertinoro, Italy.

Corpora and Language Education critically examines key concepts and issues in corpus linguistics, with a particular focus on the expanding interdisciplinary nature of the field and the role that written and spoken corpora now play in the fields of professional communication, teacher education, translation studies, lexicography, literature, critical discourse analysis, and forensic linguistics. The book also presents a series of corpus-based case studies illustrating central themes and best practices in the field.

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While native corpora and corpus linguistic tools and methods have been used and applied for quite some time in the development of learning and teaching materials, learner corpora are only just beginning to impact the field of language teaching, testing and assessment. This volume helps to close this still existing gap and highlights the great potential of learner corpus research for language pedagogy by presenting a selection of 11 original studies on learner corpora, conducted by established experts as well as by excellent young researchers. The papers included in the volume present new corpora and methods; studies on written as well as spoken learner corpora and on using data-driven learning scenarios in the classroom. All papers include sections on practical and concrete language-pedagogical applications. This volume will be of significant interest to researchers working in corpus linguistics, learner corpus research, second language acquisition and English for Academic and Specific Purposes, as well to language teachers and materials developers.

The papers published in this volume were originally presented at the Sixth International Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora (4-7 July 2004 Granada, Spain) and reflect the latest developments that have taken place in the field of the teaching applications of text corpora, with a special emphasis on their use in the foreign language classroom. The book is divided into three main sections. The first section sets the scene for what this collection of essays aims to be. It deals with the issue of what corpus linguistics can do not only for the understanding of the nature of language itself but also for so fundamental and miraculous a matter such as language learning and language acquisition. The second section tackles the issues of corpus design and corpus exploitation and provides the reader with a great variety of evidence in favour of corpora exploitation for the building of a successful teaching environment. The final section deals with practical applications of corpora in the foreign language classroom. Although each of the papers here reports particular experiences in very different teaching and learning contexts, as a whole they show that corpora can be used on the spot in a language teaching context by teachers and learners without extensive training in computational tools, and studies of linguistics features can be tailored to specific pedagogic context and learning requirements. The book represents a solid contribution to linguistic studies and language teaching and it is a good example of the diversity of the scientific lines in which corpus linguistics is involved at the present moment.

During the last four decades, a corpus-based approach to language teaching has become very significant. Direct use of corpora in language pedagogy is limited by certain factors: time, the lecturer’s knowledge and skills needed to analyze the corpus, access to sources such as computers and appropriate computer tools, or a combination of these factors. The key to a successful corpus-based approach is in the appropriate level of the lecturer’s guidance or pedagogical mediation, which depends on student age, experience, and prior knowledge. It is therefore very important that lecturers be equipped with the necessary knowledge and education for using and analyzing corpora on a daily basis. Computer Corpora and Open Source Software for Language Learning: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a cutting-edge research publication that analyzes teacher experiences in implementing computer corpora into their language learning classrooms in order to formulate additional insights as to best strategies for integrating such tools that maximizes language learning efficiency in primary and secondary education. Highlighting topics such as ICT tools, language education, and linguistics, this book is ideal for academicians, educators, computer science teachers, IT professionals, researchers, and students.

Covering the major approaches to the use of corpus data, this work gathers together influential readings from leading names in the discipline, including Biber, Widdowson, Sinclair, Carter and McCarthy.

After decades of being overlooked, corpus evidence is becoming an important component of the teaching and learning of languages. Above all, the profession needs guidance in the practicalities of using corpora, interpreting the results and applying them to the problems and opportunities of the classroom. This book is intensely practical, written mainly by a new generation of language teachers who are acknowledged experts in central aspects of the discipline. It offers advice on what to do in the classroom, how to cope with teachers' queries about language, what corpora to use including learner corpora and spoken corpora and how to handle the variability of language; it reports on some current research and explains how the access software is constructed, including an opportunity for the practitioner to write small but useful programs; and it takes a look into the future of corpora in language teaching.

Corpus linguistics is a relatively new subject in linguistics, whereby corpora of spoken or written texts are stored on computer and used as a major source for linguistic analysis. This volume discusses ways in which corpora can be used in language research and their range of current applications.

The exponential growth and development of modern technologies in all sectors has made it increasingly difficult for students, teachers and teacher educators to know which technologies to employ and how best to take advantage of them. The Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and Technology brings together experts in a number of key areas of development and change, and opens the field of language learning by exploring the pedagogical importance of technological innovation. The handbook is structured around six themes: historical and conceptual contexts core issues interactive and collaborative technologies for language learning corpora and data driven learning gaming and language learning purpose designed language learning resources. Led by fundamental concepts, theories and frameworks from language learning and teaching research rather than by specific technologies, this handbook is the essential reference for all students, teachers and researchers of Language Learning and TESOL. Those working in the areas of Applied Linguistics, Education and Media Studies will also find this a valuable book.