Laurence Anthony

Biography

Laurence Anthony is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Japan. He has a BSc degree (Mathematical Physics) from the University of Manchester, UK, and MA (TESL/TEFL) and PhD (Applied Linguistics) degrees from the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the current Director of the Center for English Language Education in Science and Engineering (CELESE). His main research interests are in corpus linguistics, educational technology, and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) program design and teaching methodologies. He serves on the editorial boards of various international journals and is a frequent member of the scientific committees of international conferences. He received the National Prize of the Japan Association for English Corpus Studies (JAECS) in 2012 for his work in corpus software tools design.

Abstract

Repositioning texts in corpus tools and methods: A move to discourse

Corpus linguistics is widely understood to be an empirical approach to the analysis of language use in a representative collection of authentic, real-world texts. Although texts can be viewed from both a bottom-up and top-down perspective, it is noticeable that the most popular corpus tools and methods prioritize the former perspective, with Key-Word-In-Context (KWIC), cluster, n-gram/lexical bundle, collocation, and keyword analyses dominating the literature. In contrast, a 'top-down' analysis of corpora continues to be a significant challenge in the field. In this talk, I will first discuss various limitations in corpus designs that make 'top-down' analyses of corpora either extremely difficult or impossible. In particular, I will focus on the problem of copyright restrictions that make access to the full texts of a corpus impossible, as well as the practice of building corpora from text 'fragments' or text 'aggregations' (combined texts). I will also describe the challenges inherent in annotating corpora for discourse-level features. Next, I'll discuss the limitations of common tools and methods and show how they can drastically distort results when considered at the level of the text. Finally, I'll introduce several tools and methods that are designed to facilitate text-level analyses of corpora and demonstrate their effectiveness at revealing important features of discourse in a second-language, academic writing context.

Shelley Staples

Biography

Shelley Staples (PhD in Applied Linguistics, Northern Arizona University, 2014) is Associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the use of corpus-based discourse analysis to investigate language use across spoken and written contexts. Her research aims to inform language teaching and assessment, particularly in the areas of English for Academic and Specific Purposes (EAP/ESP). Her current projects focus on academic writing and health care communication

Abstract

Expanding the Impact of Corpus Linguistics in the Classroom

This talk focuses on renewing and reinvigorating the discussion of the “corpus revolution” in language teaching (Conrad, 2000; Cortes 2013) and expands the conversation beyond the (English) language teaching classroom to other educational settings. It also argues for increased involvement of in-service teachers and other stakeholders to envision new utilities for teaching with corpora.

We have seen many advances in the impact of corpus linguistics in the past 10 years, including the incorporation of corpus-based materials in new textbook series for English language classrooms, and a proliferation of studies that illustrate the positive impact of using data-driven learning in language teaching classrooms (Reppen and colleagues, 2019; Schmitt & Schmitt, 2011; Boulton & Cobb, 2017). We have also seen an increase in corpus-based materials and activities in graduate level English for Academic Purposes courses (Charles, 2011, 2014; Cotos, 2014; Swales & Feak, 2012). However, there is still a large gap to fill for ESP courses outside of this setting, particularly for spoken discourse. In addition, most of the research on teaching with corpora has taken place in English. As we introduce corpus-based teaching into new domains, corpus linguists also need to take an active role in bridging the gap between research and practice. While recent work has suggested that DDL and other corpus-based approaches to teaching has been met positively by in-service teachers (Anthony et al., 2019; Schmidt, in press), it is still acknowledged that there is a heavy lift for teachers to incorporate corpus-based instruction into their pedagogy (Crosthwaite et al., 2021; Leńko-Szymańska, 2017; Ma et al., 2021). Using examples from my scholarship, both published and in progress, I illustrate how corpus linguistics can expand its impact in the classroom from where it is today. The talk will focus on incorporating corpus research into three specific teaching contexts: a pronunciation course for medical professionals, first year undergraduate composition courses for both international and domestic students, and finally first and second year language courses for Russian and Portuguese learners. In each case, involving in-service teachers and other stakeholders in the expanded vision for corpus linguistics in classrooms is key.

Stefanie Wulff

Biography

Stefanie Wulff is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Florida, and from 2019-2023, a Professor II at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. After receiving her PhD degree from the University of Bremen in 2007, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan in 2007-2008. She then spent one year at UC Santa Barbara as a lecturer before accepting a tenure-track position at the University of North Texas. In 2012, she was hired by the University of Florida. Steffi’s current research interests are in quantitative corpus linguistics, second language acquisition, heritage speaker bilingualism, and student writing development. In collaboration with Ryan K. Boettger, she co-founded the NSF-funded Technical Writing Project, which is home to the first corpus of technical student writing. Steffi is the editor-in-chief of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, and serves on various editorial boards, including the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, Studies in Corpus Linguistics, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, and Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

Abstract

Corpus linguistics in SLA: what we can, could, and cannot (yet) contribute

Corpus linguistics has gained ground across areas of linguistics research, and is likewise gaining traction in second language acquisition (SLA) research. In this talk, I aim to give an overview of how corpus data and corpus methods are used in contemporary SLA studies, and critically assess both the untapped potential as well as limitations of corpus-linguistic contributions to SLA research. Specifically, I will focus on a number of established facts about the nature of language learning that are unambiguously embraced across theoretical perspectives, what these facts imply for research in SLA, and what corpus-linguistic research in particular is contributing, could be contributing, and cannot (yet) contribute to SLA research. A first universally accepted fact is that language is a complex system, and thus language learning is a complex process. A second fact embraced by all major theoretical frameworks is that language learning relies on language input. Thirdly, there is agreement that individual differences in learners’ cognitive apparatus give rise to variation in learners’ performance, from the initial state all the way to ultimate attainment. To illustrate my take on what these facts imply for where and how corpus linguistics can contribute to SLA research, I will critically discuss some of my own research on morpho-syntactic development, particle placement, and adverbial clause ordering in sequential bilinguals and heritage speakers. I will close with a wish list for future corpus-linguistic research in SLA and some considerations for corpus compilation projects.