A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO ESL:
TEXTBOOK AND MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION
By
Angela Komsic Super
A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Linguistics
2004UMI Number: 1420006
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A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO ESL:
TEXTBOOK AND MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION
By
Angela Komsie Super
‘Taking both the advantages and limitations of using a corpus-based approach in
language learning into account, I make the claim that corpora are most suitably utilized
only if they are used for the purpose of curriculum and textbook development and
evaluation. focus this claim by providing the results of three studies that I have
conducted.
The first study provides evidence for one way that corpora may most effectively
be utilized (based on empi
al data) for the purpose of textbook evaluation, The second
study focuses on the ways in which ESL teachers and researchers may develop textbooks
based on information (e.g. idioms) gathered from simple corpus concordance searching in
relevant corpora, and how to most effectively transform basic search results into
communicative teaching materials, The third study focuses on the ways in which a
corpus-based approach may be used for the purpose of materials development in an ESP
classroom,
Each study is introduced with justifications based on prior research done on
communicative teaching methods in ESL. Each study is concluded with further
implications and elaboration on how language teachers can easily and most effectively
use corpora in their classrooms,