Barbara Seidlhofer: Using Learner Corpora for Learning
I would like to reflect and comment on Barbara Seidlhofer's project about using learner's corpora for learning and offering a seminar for that at Vienna University. (Text: "Operationalizing intertextuality: using learner corpora for learning").
At first, I was not very excited about her idea because I thought about what I would do if an instrcutor offered such a seminar at university. While reading, I changed my opinion and was kind of fascinated about her approach.
Her main aim was to show students the potential of corpus linguistics with the help of their own corpus, that means their texts and questions. I like the idea of using the students own texts (in this case: a summary) which derive from an authentic source (in this case an articel from the Time). Students had to analyze their differrent results and compare them. This process is part of what is called intertextuality. The whole class seemed to have been very motivated after a certain period of skepticism. This was her second try of the class, the first one had taken place in another semester and was not very successful, because students did not respond to the title of the class.
Anyway, this time it worked out all right and the idea of working with own , non-threatening texts and being the "owner" of the created corpora lead to a high motivation in class. Additionally, students got interested in questions they have maybe never even thought about before.
All in all, I think that this way of introducing corpora as a useful tool is really interesting and motivating, since you are working with familiar texts. It should activate the students' willingness to include corpora into their daily learning and raise awareness of its usefulness.
added: November 10, 2010
At first, I was not very excited about her idea because I thought about what I would do if an instrcutor offered such a seminar at university. While reading, I changed my opinion and was kind of fascinated about her approach.
Her main aim was to show students the potential of corpus linguistics with the help of their own corpus, that means their texts and questions. I like the idea of using the students own texts (in this case: a summary) which derive from an authentic source (in this case an articel from the Time). Students had to analyze their differrent results and compare them. This process is part of what is called intertextuality. The whole class seemed to have been very motivated after a certain period of skepticism. This was her second try of the class, the first one had taken place in another semester and was not very successful, because students did not respond to the title of the class.
Anyway, this time it worked out all right and the idea of working with own , non-threatening texts and being the "owner" of the created corpora lead to a high motivation in class. Additionally, students got interested in questions they have maybe never even thought about before.
All in all, I think that this way of introducing corpora as a useful tool is really interesting and motivating, since you are working with familiar texts. It should activate the students' willingness to include corpora into their daily learning and raise awareness of its usefulness.
added: November 10, 2010
