Keynote speakers
Geoffrey LEECH, Lancaster University, UK
Natalie KÜBLER, Université Paris 7, France
Yukio TONO, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan
Frequency is important - and challenging: a present-day corpus perspective
Geoffrey LEECH
Lancaster University, UK
I begin my lecture with a brief survey of how frequency - in particular, word frequency - had a role in language learning in the days before electronic corpora existed. Then I consider how the 'corpus revolution' made available frequency information about language use in a totally unprecedented way from the 1960s onward. We now live in an age where frequency dictionaries and frequency-based grammatical information are becoming more and more available - for example, a new corpus-based frequency dictionary of Portuguese has just been published. New sources of frequency information from the Web are being tapped. Various kinds of knowledge found in present-day learners' dictionaries (grammatical, collocational, semantic) are getting to be frequency-based.
But how far is this useful for the language teacher and learner? Is the right kind of frequency knowledge being captured? In the second half of the presentation, I will consider the equation "more frequent = more important", what questions of frequency we really need to ask, and how far they can be answered in the present state of corpus linguistics.
Working with Different Corpora in Translation Teaching
Natalie KÜBLER
Université Paris 7, France
Corpus use in translation teaching has established itself for some time now. Several types of corpora have been taken into account in this field, such as parallel (also called translation) corpora, comparable corpora, monolingual corpora, disposable corpora, specialised vs "general" corpora etc.
Depending on the translation type -- literary or pragmatic translation -- corpus use can vary very much and offers several approaches to help learners with the act of translating. This paper however will focus on pragmatic translation, i.e. translation that is based on communicative, rather than literary criteria.
We will present the different possible approaches that can be applied for translation and translation teaching, and the different types of corpora used in this respect. Learner translation corpora will be presented to illustrate how such a corpus can be used in teaching translation. This type of corpus (which could be defined as a sub-type of learner corpora), is still quite rare. Suggestions for combining different approaches to obtain better results will be shown.
TaLC in Action: Recent Innovations in Corpus-Based English Language Teaching in Japan
Yukio TONO
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan
In this talk, I will present recent innovations in English language teaching in Japan with a special emphasis on the creation of the world's first corpus-based TV English conversation program. The program ran from 2003 to 2006, a hundred units featuring 100 keywords selected based on BNC. Each unit focuses on useful collocation patterns of the keywords, with model skits videotaped in UK, USA and Australia, and ample exercises. A special CG character called "Mr Corpus" introduced the corpus ranking.
The impact of the program was significant. More than a million people watched the program and the word "corpus" became a familiar term. Various corpus-based teaching materials have been published since then. There is also a growing demand among English teachers to know more about corpora and corpus-based ELT. I will report on some of these recent developments in Japan and share some useful tips, guidelines, and a lesson I learned from these experiences.