Corpus Linguistics in pre-service teaching in Bahia communities of practice: challenges, innovation and autonomous learning Cristina Arcuri Eluf Universidade do Estado da Bahia UNEB Campus XIV Department of Education English Language Professor criseluf@gmail.com research, a new research enterprise, a new way of Abstract thinking about language” (p. 106). Research centres in the UK have taken the lead in CL The impact of corpora is easily observable in Linguistics: it has changed the way we research, and several researchers have collected understand language use. However, despite huge amounts of textual data in a principled way. their potential for impact in society, the use of Some of these collections, known as corpora, are corpora inside and outside the university available online in an open access form (e.g. settings in Northeast Brazil is still restricted. British National Corpus). Among its advantages in Rather than compiling another research corpus, ESOL, CL helps teachers and students to identify the present project aims at engaging several which words/structures are more (or less) educational communities in the use of freely frequently used in a given genre/register and to available corpora. The use of CL in teacher investigate their linguistic patterning. education opens exciting prospects in the Several reasons account for the pedagogical teaching of English to speakers of other languages (ESOL): it can be seen as “a new impact of Corpus Linguistics (CL) research in pedagogical perspective to foreign language second/foreign language learning. Granger (2009) acquisition” (Granger, 2002). This Project believes that regarding ELT, there are very presents the práxis of CL in pre service promising teaching and learning resources once the teaching in Northeastern Public Universities in teacher is familiar with the area. One rather Bahia, Brazil. It also presents results of the fundamental reason is that CL approach makes it expanding use of pedagogical applications of possible for the teacher to design needs-based and CL in small rural public secondary schools as learner centered applications, as this is mostly well. evident in making direct use of corpora by encouraging learners to look at corpus data and intuitively getting information about language. One 1. Corpus Linguistics & English way of encouraging learners to use corpora is to language teaching: a view on enhance the pedagogical relevance (Braun, 2005) Northeast Brazilian of corpus use. It seems reasonable to address the influence of the pedagogical functions of DDL, Communities of Practice which can be best described as “the attempt to cut Corpus Linguistics (CL) has revolutionized the out the middle man as far as possible and give the way we describe, theorize and research languages. learner direct access to data” (Johns, 1991). In its As Leech (1992) explains it, CL is a broadest sense, DDL has both direct and indirect “methodological basis for pursuing linguistic uses and applications. Paredes et al (2011) discuss such uses of corpora and explain that by indirect 22 use writers or researchers access a corpus “to helping the learner develop the ability to see inform foreign language syllabus design or patterning in the target language and therefore materials development such as dictionaries, course form generalizations to account for that patterning- books, grammars etc.” whilst “direct use entails an what could also contribute to learner´s awareness eminently hands-on exploitation of the corpus by of conventionality and idiomaticity “levels” of the the students and their teachers for language language, besides others. To sum up, DDL learning purposes”, as suggested by Römer (2008). activities are varied, being “limited only by the In addition to that, there are two distinctive effects imagination of the user” as Breyer (2006) of DDL approach to inductive language teaching, brilliantly defines. identified by Johns (1991), which must be taken The literature has been reporting a number of into account when considering the pedagogical advantages in the use of DDL in language relevance of working on DDL. Firstly, there is the teaching/learning: it may raise the authenticity of main effect of DDL on the role of the teacher, the language used in classrooms, it may make “who has to learn to become a director and students and teachers more aware of language coordinator of student-initiated research” and patterns, it may develop their autonomy and it may secondly, the “main effect of DDL, which is a foster their critical skills. revaluation of the place of the grammar in Contrary to this development and increasing language-learning and language-teaching”. research field very little research has been According to Boulton (2009, p. 11) from teacher’s conducted in public schools in Brazil to check point of view, if DDL has yet to “make real whether there is any empirical support for these inroads to mainstream teaching practices and claims. This is especially true in most educational environments, the problem could lie at any these settings where English is taught in Brazil. stages: they might not about DDL, might be Unfortunately, according to research, CL has not unwilling or unable to put it into practice or even yet been included in most curricula in our country. reject it.” Nevertheless, Cheng et al. (2003) report It is certainly the case in the city where the that over 80 per cent of their undergraduate proposed project is being conducted. Conceição do students found the corpus-driven and data-driven Coité, a small rural city in the Northeast of Brazil projects useful. Moreover DDL researchers are where the local education requires considerable increasingly working in high school environments improvement. It is a rural town of approximately (e.g. Braun 2007; Sun & Wang, 2003; Ciezielska- 68,000 inhabitants in Bahia northeast Brazil. It has Ciupek 2001) and findings show that their students as its main economic and social development seem to be enthusiastic with DDL. As Römer system the extraction of “sisal” cord, a plant (2006, p. 128) suggests when learners are typical of that region. From this exotic plant introduced to CL studies they not only “acquire different kinds of products are created and language but also ICTs skills and life skills at the exported to many countries around the world. As same time.” far as cultural aspects are concerned, in this rural town there is just one public university and two distant learning poles of private faculties. 2. This Project However, there are no cultural facilities in the The project herein presented aims at introducing town, such as cinemas, theatres or museums and Brazilian ESOL undergraduates to the principles of unfortunately most communities members have data-driven learning (DDL). In a broad sense, DDL never been to any of such cultural environments. allows learners to become language researchers The only public university holds three and to discover language patterns by themselves undergraduate courses: the Language Course with (Johns, 1991). As Johns (1991) has pointed out, Bachelors´ degree in English Language, the regular use of concordance line and DDL History Course and the Radio, Television and investigations with English learners have already Communications Course. In the English Language brought about important outcomes, such as: course there are eight modules distributed into four provoking stimulating enquiry in learning process academic years. The English Course mainly through speculation on the part of the learner, focuses on the English language structure as well as on Teaching Education curriculum having as 23 main modules: grammar, syntax, semantics, References morphology, phonology, teaching methodologies, Boulton, A. (2009) Testing the limits of data-driven technologies applied to education, linguistics, learning: language proficiency and training. applied linguistics, speaking, reading, writing, ReCALL, v.21, n.1, p. 37-54. psychology applied to education; literary studies, interdisciplinary studies, monographic preparatory Braun, S. (2005) From pedagogically relevant corpora to authentic language learning content. ReCALL, modules and pre-service teaching. In their last two v.17, p. 47-64 BRAUN, S. (2007) ‘Integrating corpus years, the undergraduates have to conduct an work into secondary education: From datadriven ethnographic study of a state school and its learning to needs-driven corpora’. ReCALL 19/3: community in the following pre-service regulatory 307-328. program: 5th semester observe classes, 6th semester co-participate in classes, 7th semester and Breyer, Y. (2006) “My Concordancer: tailor-made software for language teachers and learners,” in S. 8th semester teach classes. Throughout their Braun, K. Kohn and J. Mukherjee (eds) Corpus academic life in each semester undergraduates Technology and Language Pedagogy, Frankfurt am have to take about five to seven different subjects Main: Peter Lang, pp. 157-76. and for each subject three assessment units/tests are to be taken. The participants in this project are Ciezielska-Ciupek, M. (2001). Teaching with the Internet and corpus materials: Preparation of the ELT undergraduates currently enrolled in the 5th, 6th materials using the Internet and corpus resources. In and 7th semesters of the Bachelor´s Degree in B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Ed.), PALC 2001: English Language. Furthermore, as part of their Practical Applications in Language Corpora (pp. 521- undergraduate course in English language, students 531). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. at the State University of Bahia have to undertake Granger, S. (2002) Computer Learner Corpora. Second a number of pedagogical modules so that they may Language Acquisition Foreign Language Teaching. teach in primary/secondary schools. Since the vast Amsterdan. John Benjamin. majority of Brazilian undergraduate students do not have CL in their curriculum, the author of this Granger, S. (2009) The contribution of learner corpora project has, since May 2015, been teaching the to second language acquisition and foreign language teaching: A critical evaluation. In: AIJIMER, K. (ed.) research participants workshops and Study (2009) Corpora and Language Teaching . Benjamins: Sessions on CL, in order to introduce the Amsterdam & Philadelphia. p. 13-32. participants to CL basic principles and tools as well as to its pedagogical applications. The Johns, T. (1991) “Should you be persuaded: two participants were asked to design one corpus samples of data-driven-learning materials.” In T. activity themselves, which are being trialed out in Johns and P. King (eds.) Classroom Concordancing. English Language Research: Birmingham University, public schools of their rural communities. In order p.1-16. to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of DDL in such public school settings in northeast Leech, G..; Garside, R.; Rayson, P.(1992) The Brazil, we will conduct interviews with (i) automatic content analysis of spoken discourse, in undergraduate preservice teachers before and after Wilson, A. & Thomas, J. A. they implement the activities and (ii) school Paredes, P. P.; Tornel; M.S.; Carelo, J.M.A. (2011) The students. Therefore, when analyzing the final steps, Role of Corpus Linguistics in Developing Innovation data triangulation will provide us with a grounded In Data-Driven Language Learning. Congreso understanding of the potential of DDL in ESOL Internacional de Innovación Universidad Politécnica teaching/learning in our communities of practice. de Cartagena. With a view to maximizing the impact of the Roemer, U. (2006) Pedagogical Applications of project, the objectives and results of the research Corpora: some reflections on the current scope and a will be made available in a blog. This blog will wish list for future development. ZAA 54.2. p.121- also host the pedagogical activities developed by 134. the students (pending their due consent). Sun, Y. C., & Wang, L. Y. (2003). Concordancers in the EFL classroom: Cognitive approaches and collocation difficulty. Computer Assisted Language 24 Learning, 16(1), 83-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/ call.16.1.83.15528 Tagnin, S.E. O. University of São Paulo at comet.fflch.usp.br) 25