About the Project
Language corpora (large electronic collections of texts) began to inform the creation of textbooks and reference materials since the 1960s. The concept of Data-Driven Learning, the use of corpora in instructed second language acquisition, can be traced to the late 1980s. Despite many decades of use and a substantial body of literature showing their efficacy in the classroom, however, language corpora are far from a common pedagogical tool. Especially for languages other than English, teachers attempting to move from theory to praxis will find very few pedagogical manuals or user-friendly corpus tutorials.
Incorporating Corpora provides an online corpus-based workbook for teaching German to English-speaking learners. It includes a brief introduction to Data-Driven Learning, a guide for using one specific suite of German corpora, and a selection of corpus-based assignments.
The corpus-based assignments provided here are conceived as supplementary materials that can be used both for learning new structures and for deepening knowledge of previously learned structures (i.e., for learners at different German proficiency levels). Each module progresses from independent awareness-raising and practice exercises with automated feedback to more open-ended production exercises that can be submitted to the teacher and followed by extension exercises in class.
We hope that this resource will help learners substantially improve their German knowledge by providing them with several I’s that have been shown to be beneficial for language learning (Carter & McCarthy, 1995; Laufer, 2017; Leow, 2018): rich Input (exposure to a plethora of real-life examples), guided Induction (induction of usage rules from data analysis), and active Involvement (independent work that requires cognitive engagement and deep processing of the material). We welcome your feedback and suggestions!
References
Carter, R., & McCarthy, M. (1995). Grammar and the spoken language. Applied Linguistics, 16(2), 141-158
Laufer, B. (2017). The three “I”s of second language vocabulary learning: Input, instruction, involvement. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. 3, pp. 343–354). London: Routledge.
Leow, R. P. (2018). ISLA: How implicit or how explicit should it be? Theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical/curricular issues. Language Teaching Research, 23(4), 476-493.
Project Team
The project is led by Dr. Nina Vyatkina, Professor of German and Applied Linguistics at the University of Kansas. Her research interests include Instructed Second Language Acquisition, corpus-based language learning and teaching, and learner corpus research. Her articles on these topics have appeared in leading Applied Linguistics journals. She serves as an Associate Editor of Language Learning & Technology and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research. She is a co-recipient of the 2009 Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).
Dr. Vyatkina was assisted on this project by Schirin Kourehpaz, who served as co-author on several modules.
Citing Incorporating Corpora
Suggested citation for website:
Vyatkina, N. (Ed.). (2020). Incorporating corpora: Using corpora to teach German to English-speaking learners [Online instructional materials]. University of Kansas Open Language Resource Center. https://opentext.ku.edu/corpora
Suggested citation for an individual module:
Kourehpaz, S., & Vyatkina, N. (2020). Adjective endings 1. In N. Vyatkina (Ed.). Incorporating corpora: Using corpora to teach German to English-speaking learners [Online instructional materials]. University of Kansas Open Language Resource Center. https://opentext.ku.edu/corpora/chapter/adj1/
