TeleNex - Help for Teachers of English by Using Corpora
What I especially liked was the idea of the platform TeleNex which was presented in the text by Tsui. Teachers of English always have to rely on pre-assembled grammar books but there are certain questions that come up again and again as the examples of the text showed:
- Synonymous lexical items used differently
- linguistic evidence versus prescriptive grammar
- ...
Here, teachers get the chance to ask questions they feel unsure about and they get relatively reliable anwers taking corpora results into consideration. There are, of course, other purposes of TeleNex as being a platform for teachers, but providing helpful information using corpora is the one that we are interested in.
The possibility to access real linguistic corpora for authentic reference is amazing and the best solution you can get right now in order to satisfy your student's question. Even if you can't say that something is always the case and definitely true for all, you can at least refer to the fact that it is how native speakers use it or say it generally and therefore give real evidence. This satisfies the teacher and the students. And as a language is always something that is vivid and changing, the use of corpora rather than the pure knowledge of fixed grammar books is appropriate and recommendable.
For teachers, it offers a reliable source of knowledge and reference as well as a good opportunity to talk and exchange opinions with other teachers. As TeleNex is especially designed for teachers of English in China, they may encounter different questions as teachers in Germany. Therefore, I would appreciate such a platform for Germany as well.
Click here if you want to access the homepage to get further information.
added: November 10, 2010
- Synonymous lexical items used differently
- linguistic evidence versus prescriptive grammar
- ...
Here, teachers get the chance to ask questions they feel unsure about and they get relatively reliable anwers taking corpora results into consideration. There are, of course, other purposes of TeleNex as being a platform for teachers, but providing helpful information using corpora is the one that we are interested in.
The possibility to access real linguistic corpora for authentic reference is amazing and the best solution you can get right now in order to satisfy your student's question. Even if you can't say that something is always the case and definitely true for all, you can at least refer to the fact that it is how native speakers use it or say it generally and therefore give real evidence. This satisfies the teacher and the students. And as a language is always something that is vivid and changing, the use of corpora rather than the pure knowledge of fixed grammar books is appropriate and recommendable.
For teachers, it offers a reliable source of knowledge and reference as well as a good opportunity to talk and exchange opinions with other teachers. As TeleNex is especially designed for teachers of English in China, they may encounter different questions as teachers in Germany. Therefore, I would appreciate such a platform for Germany as well.
Click here if you want to access the homepage to get further information.
added: November 10, 2010
