Cambridge consultant Daniela Meyer explores what makes corpus-informed materials different and why you should be using them in language learning.
What is a corpus?
You may have already noticed that nowadays several ELT materials are corpus-informed. But what is a corpus and how are corpus-informed materials different? According to Michael McCarthy, a corpus “is a collection of texts, written or spoken, usually stored in a computer database. They may be quite small, for example, containing only 50,000 words of text, or very large, containing millions of words.” Cambridge University Press has collected the The Cambridge International Corpus, which has 700 million words of texts and consists of a wide variety of both written and spoken material.
Both written and spoken corpora show us how language is used in real life and in many different contexts. Once a corpus is stored in a database, we can analyze it and search for information about the language. We can, for example, get answers to questions like:
- What are the most frequent words and phrases in English?
- What are the differences between spoken and written English?
- Which tenses do people use most frequently?
- How often do people use idiomatic expressions and why?
How can corpus-informed materials help language learning?
A corpus is a rich resource for course book authors because it provides a detailed view of how people speak and write in everyday situations. Authors can look for typical uses of everyday words. For example, how do people most typically use the verb can? They can also consider the frequency of word use. The most frequent word in spoken North American English is I. You is also in the top 20 word list. In the written corpus, however, I and you appear less frequently. But ‘non-words’ such as uh, um, and oh are high-frequency items. Authors can use this information to design appropriate materials and activities for classes and can prioritize information accordingly.
A corpus can also provide useful statistics to help writer’s present grammar and vocabulary in the best way. In choosing course vocabulary items, frequency lists are very helpful. For example, there is a wide range of words in English for describing colors. By searching the corpus authors establish a list of the most common color words in order of their frequency. These can then be prioritized accordingly.
Another way of learning from the corpus is the study of collocation (the likelihood that two words will occur together). For example, the word blond is likely to be used with hair, curls, woman but not with car or jacket. Beige, on the other hand, occurs with carpet or jacket, but not with hair. We say, therefore, that blond collocates with hair, but beige does not. We say blond hair but not blond car. Knowledge of collocations is vital for effective language use: a sentence that is grammatically correct will sound awkward if collocational preferences are not used. Developing learners’ awareness and familiarity with patterns of collocation from the beginning of their learning will enhance their speaking abilities.
Are corpus-informed materials special?
Teachers and learners should expect that, in most ways, corpus-informed materials will look like traditionally prepared materials. The presentation of new language and activity types will be familiar. Beneath the surface, however, corpus-informed materials are genuinely special because they are based on actual usage. The contexts in which words and grammar structures are used are authentic ones, and the writers can anticipate common errors but looking at corpora of learners’ work. Last but not least, successful learning is all about motivation, and corpus-informed materials motivate both teachers and learners because they can be sure that the language they are practicing is modern, used in everyday situations and corresponds to what they will hear and see in real life. It is not artificial or invented language but consists of the most widely used words, phrases and grammar. Learners are therefore sure to produce more effective communication!
Learn more about the Cambridge English Corpus