Teaching Grammar - Week 9 - Grammar and Corpus Data

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 9 of the course Teaching Grammar for the Licenciatura in English Teaching at ULACIT. In this class we will do several activities to explore the topic corpus data and we will begin working on your grammar syllabus project. 

Today's Goals:

• Extract useful language content to achieve a communicative aim according to a CEFR descriptor.
• Search the corpus data to make discoveries about how words and phrases are actually used. 

Guiding Questions:

• How can the CEFR help us use grammar as a communicative resource when designing a language course?
• What does it mean to know a word or phrase?
• How can corpus linguistics help us make discoveries about how language is actually used?

Warm Up: My favorite words

To start today's class we will share some of our favorite and least favorite words and phrases in English.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Task 1: Grammar Syllabus Proposal Project

For one of your group projects this term you will create a proposal for a syllabus for a conversational English course. You will generate the language content for this syllabus by following a step by step process to select grammar, vocabulary, and learning tasks related to Can Do descriptors from the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). Then you will make decisions about how to sequence your content into units and you will write a brief synthesis paper describing the design choices you made.

• Assignment Guidelines: CLICK HERE

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE

Task 2: Using COCA

The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the world's largest collection of spoken and written English texts containing over a billion words. You can search the corpus to learn lots of interesting things about how words and phrases work. It's free, but you need an account. 

• Sign up: CLICK HERE or copy/paste this link into your internet browser. 
• https://www.english-corpora.org/register.asp?n=y

• Try it out: CLICK HERE or copy/paste the link into your internet browser to go to the search page. Type in your favorite English word or short phrase.
• https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/

• Options: Try using the following options to see what you can learn.
• Word: Definition, Topics, Collocates

Task 3: Using Corpus Data

Now you will continue working with COCA to complete some tasks with your partners. Click your group link below and follow the instructions.

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE