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Kerr 1997 Using Concordances
Kerr 1997 Using Concordances
Philip Kerr, Director of Studies at IH London, looks at practical classroom
applications of the concordanced language data that is now widely available in
print and on the Net.
The history of technological innovation in and individuals can subscribe to the Cobuild
language teaching has not been a spectacular Bank of English, but for most teachers the
success story. For most language teachers free sampling that Cobuild offers on the Net
around the world, the language laboratory is more than enough. This provides up to 40
has gone the way of the record player and the lines of text for any word that you want to
box of slides. The computer has dramatically concordance. It can be accessed at the
affected the quality of presentation of Cobuild Website at:
teaching material, but advances in software http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk
have yet to be fully exploited in most
classrooms. The ideas which follow in this article are
largely taken from the work of Gill Francis,
The biggest technological impact on our one of the Cobuild staff members. A detailed
classrooms in recent years has arguably come bibliography of her work and that of other
from an unexpected source: the development Cobuild researchers can also be found at the
of computer technology to record and analyse Website.
large amounts of real language use. This has
profoundly altered our understanding of There are a number of strong reasons to
language, and a new generation of make use of this data in the classroom. The
dictionaries has emerged as a result. These data illustrates actual language use rather
databases, or corpora, consist of millions of than uninformed prescriptions (see the
words of written and spoken language and example on the next page, which may help us
can be analysed in a variety of ways. One of to decide whether data should be singular or
the most widely known analytical tools is a plural) and it demonstrates clearly how
concordancer a device which lines up differences in sense involve differences in
instances of particular words or patterns so syntax, and how language patterns are
that the language items which cooccur can inextricably both syntactic and lexical.
be identified. Moreover, concordanced data provide(s) the
learner with opportunities to discover the
Concordanced data can be accessed in a foreign language in a way that is focussed and
variety of ways. HarperCollins have published limited, and potentially, therefore,
Concordance Samplers under the Cobuild confidencebuilding.
imprint the first in the series was devoted to
prepositions (Annette Capel, 1993). Schools
GUESS THE CONCORDANCED WORD
Plans for a season of success, but a ? decision by the referee, a dodgy
things go wrong? A pinnacle in the ? car stakes in 1973 which helped
when he said he’d got Julie up the ? . But he was really angry about it
the present for my mother seems a ? idea: since she can’t even bear to
moments just about outweigh the ? ones and it’s harmless enough for
If a football manager has a ? player, he drops him. If an
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DATA singular or plural? A sample from the COBUILD Website.
Analytical / consciousnessraising activities in real thing. And have you ever come across a
the classroom for language learners and trainee who argues until you’re both blue in
teacher trainees consist essentially of the the face that ‘we don’t say that’? Get him to
following: find out from the data!
1. Exploring syntactical / lexical patterns
(TAKE + time expression)
SEMANTIC or · Ask students to identify the word class of
SYNTACTIC the word following TAKE.
LEXICAL
· Ask students to arrange the time
PATTERNS
expressions on a cline.
2. Exploring syntactical / lexical patterns #2
connecting (THERE’S SOMETHING +adj+ ABOUT)
· Ask students to decide what the adjectives
following SOMETHING have in common.
Classroom ideas
3. Exploring the relationship between syntax
The examples which follow can be used with and meaning (RESOLVE)
the very small concordance samples printed on · Ask students to divide the concordanced
the next page, but once you get going with examples into two groups of meaning. Ask
this kind of work you will want to give students to identify the grammatical
students / trainees more data to look at. patterns associated with each group.
Intermediate and lower level students will
benefit from exploring collocations and other 4. Exploring grammatical ‘rules’
real patterns. Get students to identify the (PERFUME, CHEESE, BEER)
Tippexedout concordanced word, the words · Ask students to differentiate the instances
that come before or after this word, or to of countable and uncountable usage.
complete the word at the beginning or end of · Ask students to account for these
the entry. Advanced level students will enjoy differences.
looking at and analysing concordanced taboo
words, neologisms and words whose
meanings shift over short periods of time. For
teacher trainees, concordanced data provides For more ideas on using concordances in the
invaluable support in lesson planning, classroom, see Concordances In The
anticipating problems, analysing target Classroom by Chris Tribble and Glyn J ones,
language. For language analysis work, no Longman 1990.
more dubious examples from Discover
English illuminate your seminars with the
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CONCORDANCE SAMPLES WHAT’S HOT
ON THE WEB?
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