CLLLT: Assignment information MA Applied Linguistics & TESOL Corpus Linguistics and Language Learning/Teaching Assessment task and criteria The task is a) to conduct an investigation of language use in corpus data, and b) to include some discussion connecting your study to language learning and/or teaching practices and issues. While part a) is undoubtedly the main requirement, it is important not to neglect part b). Part b) should take up approximately 10%-20% of your word count. However, it does not need to be written as a separate section. It should discuss learning and teaching issues or implications relating to your corpus linguistic topic. For example:
Do your study findings suggest teaching materials on this area of language need to be adjusted? If so, what kinds of adjustment would you recommend? Is this study suitable for language learners themselves to investigate in the corpus? What levels of learner? What kinds of support would the teacher need to give? For the corpus investigation, you are free to choose what area of language use to focus on
(e.g., vocabulary; grammar; collocation; word meaning), what register(s)/genre(s) to analyse, and whether the texts are by L1 or L2 language users (or both).
You may use existing, publicly available corpora or design and build your own corpus.
Normally, the language being analysed would be in English. However, if you wish to analyse corpus data in another language, please consult with the module instructors.
There is a section below containing some examples of assignment topics.
Assignment word count The required word count is 3,000 words. There is a 10% tolerance on this limit, above or below (i.e., minimum 2,700 words, maximum 3,300 words). If your work is outside this range, it will be penalised.
Appendix data is excluded from the word count. Tables are included in the word count, unless they appear as images. All images should be clearly legible.
Tips and requirements Please take note of the following points:
You are likely to get assignment ideas from the module materials – particularly the practical activities in each unit – and from your reading in corpus linguistics. Unless you are doing a replication study (see Example 4 in the topics section below) you should avoid repeating a topic that has already been investigated by someone in detail. As in other modules, you must clear your topic with your tutor before you begin working on it in depth. Since you will be analysing real data, you should normally include a research question in your study, and in your assignment. This will help you justify your methods and guide your analysis. Research questions are typically answered when you discuss your results. As corpus linguistics is concerned with methods, you must include a methodology section in your assignment. Methodology should include a description and justification of the corpus data and an explanation of the methods you use to analyse the data. If appropriate, explain how you designed and compiled your own corpus. Evaluate the corpus and your methodology, discussing strengths and limitations. Include both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus data. Feel free to include tables and/or charts, but be sure to discuss them in the main text. Include, and comment on, example sentences/utterances from the corpus, e.g. sentences or concordances lines that illustrate typical or unusual aspects of usage of a word. A lengthy literature review is not needed. But you should use a good range of references from the corpus linguistics literature (including in relation to learning/teaching) where appropriate – e.g., to introduce your study; to justify your methodology; to compare with your own results; to relate your findings to learning and teaching. Assessment Criteria Your assignment will be assessed in terms of your performance in the usual areas:
Organisation, structure and presentation Knowledge and understanding of concepts and ideas; Critical analysis and reflection) Research – relevant for this assignment because you will be analysing data Is your research aim(s) and research question(s) appropriate and well defined? How clearly are the research methods explained and justified? PLUS: Are findings evaluated clearly and critically?
You should also ensure you meet the module Intended Learning Outcomes, i.e. demonstrate that you can:
Investigate language use in corpus data representing one or more text types, or one or more categories of speaker. Critically assess previous research in the field, and the usefulness of corpus methodologies for different applications, including language teaching and learning Understand and apply principles of corpus design and sampling to use appropriate corpora for research and teaching needs. Critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of corpus data and software tools for a) language analysis, and b) language learning and teaching
Some examples of topics A few example project ideas are outlined below. However, these are for illustration only. As you work through the module; we encourage you to think up your own topic.
- Investigate near synonymy: Carry out an analysis of two or more closely synonymous words from the same grammatical category (e.g. the verbs happen and occur, or the adverbs almost and nearly), but not a pair that we have already studied in the materials.
Possibilities for developing this topic:
You could compare the words in terms of their collocations, distributions, and any other aspects of meaning and use that you consider relevant (e.g. semantic preference and semantic prosody); You could compare your findings to the information on your chosen words in one or two dictionaries of English, e.g. one contemporary L1 and one contemporary L2 dictionary. Critically discuss the value of corpus-based approaches for learning and/or teaching word meaning and use. It is recommended to use a large publicly available corpus (e.g. COCA, BNC1994, BNC2014) as the main data for this topic.
- Compile and analyse your own corpus: your corpus should consist of texts from a specific genre, text type, topic or author, e.g. A specific discipline of academic writing (e.g. Economics; Biology), either by experts or language learners/novices Articles on a given topic from different types of newspaper, e.g. newspapers from different political orientation, reporting on a major event such as the UK-EU “Brexit” referendum, or a recent US election. Posts on an online discussion forum or blog on a particular topic, e.g. vaping. For such an assignment you would need to discuss the rationale for the corpus design (i.e. your considerations in choosing the corpus texts, and the corpus size) and its strengths/limitations. Include a listing of your corpus texts in the Appendix, with web addresses if relevant (e.g. for online blogs).
Areas of analysis could include, e.g., the keywords in each type of data, and aspects of the behaviour of selected keywords, such as their meanings in concordance lines, collocation patterns, and word clusters.
It is recommended to use AntConc (or similar software) for this type of corpus analysis.
- Study contemporary change in vocabulary/grammar or lexicogrammar: Choose an area of recent suspected change in standard British English or American English (or both). You could use a diachronic corpus or corpus family (e.g. COCA, or Spoken BNC1994 vs Spoken BNC2014). It is advisable to focus on one or two features of vocabulary, grammar, or lexicogrammar, that is/are claimed to have become more or less frequently used, or changed in meaning, in recent years, e.g.
Verb complementation patterns such as try and VERB vs. try to VERB, or begin to VERB vs. begin VERB-ing Vocabulary of a formal character, such as title nouns (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr, etc.), or indefinite pronoun one referring to a person (e.g. One hears this often nowadays) One or more words that have changed in meaning (e.g. awesome; cascade; reach out) or use (e.g. ask used as a noun) What researchers or popular writers (e.g. newspapers, or websites such as Grammar Girl) have previously said about change in that area of language Possible reasons why those linguistic changes might have occurred Comparison of results for British and American English, or other major varieties. The extent to which language teaching materials reflect contemporary usage, and how they could be adjusted if they do not reflect current usage well. In your project you could include discussion of (for example): 4) A replication study Read a published corpus-based article on language in use, or language learning/teaching, and replicate the study as far as possible on a different corpus.
Discuss the aims, research questions, methods and results, including a critical comparison of your findings with those in the original corpus study.
Discuss the pedagogical implications: How might students benefit from this investigation? Is it an investigation that students could conduct themselves with DataDriven Learning (DDL) methods? Why (not)?
Title:
- Introduction (450–500 words) Problem: learners confuse say and tell Relevance in Bangladesh exam-oriented classrooms Limitations of rule-based teaching (e.g., “tell + person”) Role of corpus linguistics in showing real usage Aim of the study
- Research Aim & Questions (100–120 words) Aim: To investigate the patterns of use of say and tell in contemporary English using corpus data and explore pedagogical implications for EFL teaching in Bangladesh.
Research Questions: What are the main grammatical and collocational patterns of say and tell in corpus data? How can corpus evidence explain common learner errors and inform EFL teaching practices? 3. Brief Literature Background (400–450 words) 3.1 Corpus linguistics and language patterns Sinclair (collocation and phraseology) Hunston / McEnery (corpus methods) Differences in complementation patterns Importance of collocation and syntax Data-driven learning (DDL) Benefits for noticing patterns (Johns, Boulton) 3.2 Say vs Tell: near-synonymous reporting verbs 3.3 Corpus-informed language teaching 4. Methodology ( 450–500 words) 4.1 Corpus selection COCA: size, balance, contemporary English Justification for pedagogical relevance Searches: say (verb), tell (verb) Collocates: noun objects and grammatical patterns Concordance lines for qualitative analysis Quantitative: frequency & collocations Qualitative: concordance interpretation American English bias Search filtering constraints 4.2 Data collection 4.3 Analytical approach 4.4 Limitations of method 5. Results (700–800 words) 5.1 Frequency comparison Overall frequency of say vs tell
Register differences (spoken vs academic)
say + NOUN (e.g., hello, goodbye, word, thing)
tell + NOUN (e.g., truth, story, time, people)
say + clause / say to someone
tell + someone + clause / tell + person + to V
Authentic corpus lines showing typical usage
5.2 Collocational patterns 5.3 Grammatical patterns 5.4 Concordance examples 6. Discussion (500–600 words) Key semantic and syntactic differences between say and tell Why Bangladeshi learners confuse them translation-based learning exam-focused memorisation lack of exposure to authentic input Comparison with textbook explanations Problems with rule-only teaching Teaching reporting verbs through collocations and patterns Using corpus data / DDL tasks in higher secondary & university classes Suggested classroom activities based on corpus findings 7. Implications for EFL Teaching in Bangladesh (400–450 words) 8. Limitations and Conclusion (200–250 words) Limitations Corpus variety (mainly American English) Focus on only two verbs Summary of key findings Value of corpus linguistics for improving verb teaching in Bangladesh Conclusion 9. References Corpus linguistics sources EFL pedagogy and DDL literature 10. Appendix (not in word count) Collocate tables