THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

Information in the Degree Programme Tables may still be subject to change in response to Covid-19

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Moray House School of Education and Sport : Education

Postgraduate Course: Corpus Linguistics and Language Teaching (EDUA11296)

Course Outline
SchoolMoray House School of Education and Sport CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course is aimed at prospective language teachers who have not worked with corpora before. The course will introduce the students to corpus linguistics as a means of investigating language and will explore a range of corpora, spoken and written, across a variety of Englishes, from British and American English to Singaporean English. The course will focus, in particular, on how corpus-based tools and methodologies can be applied in a teaching and learning context. It will concentrate on the teaching of skills (speaking, listening, writing, in particular), systems (vocabulary and grammar) as well as sociolinguistics and pragmatics. It will draw on the use of tools such as word frequency lists, keyword lists, cluster lists, as well as concordance lines, in order to look at form and functional patterning in language. It will focus not only on how the teacher can use corpus linguistics in the classroom to create materials but also how students can be encouraged to use corpora themselves.
Course description Not entered
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  1
Course Start Flexible
Course Start Date 17/01/2022
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 196 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Your 4000 word assignment will consist of two parts. In part 1 of your assignment, you are required to present and discuss findings obtained from a corpus-based investigation you have carried out (e.g. on a language teaching problem). It can relate to at least one or more of the following areas: speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary, sociolinguistics, pragmatics (2000 words)

In part 2, using your findings, or based on insights from your findings, you must prepare a lesson which is corpus-based and suitable for a particular cohort of students you have in mind. You will discuss and evaluate your corpus-based activities and provide insights into the choices you have made in their design, as well as the challenges encountered in putting the lesson together. You will be required to refer to literature to support your decisions (2000 words). As part 1 and part 2 are connected, you will be assessed on the overall assignment.

Word count: 4000 words, excluding data and appendices
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:

use corpus tools and methodologies to query the corpus and extract and interpret the patterns accordingly

create and evaluate corpus-based materials based on research

evaluate the main theoretical strands which underpin corpus-based research

evaluate the theoretical concepts which have been applied to teaching materials in a language teaching and learning context

apply the main theoretical concepts and principles of corpus linguistics to their research and teaching
Reading List
Aijmer, K. 2009. Corpora and Language Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Baker, P. 2009. 'The BE06 Corpus of British English and recent language change'. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14 (3): 312-337.

Biber, D. 1995. Dimensions of Register Variation: A cross-linguistic comparison. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D. S, Conrad and R. Reppen, 1998. Corpus Linguistics. Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D. S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad, E. Finegan, 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. New York: Longman.

Biber, D. M. Davies, J. K. Jones and N. Tracey-Ventura, 2006. Spoken and written register variation in Spanish: A multi-dimensional analysis. Corpora 1 (1): 1-37.

Carter, R. and M. McCarthy, 2006. Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cheng, W. 2012. Exploring Corpus Linguistics: London: Routledge

Coates, J. 1993. Women, Men and Language: a sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. London: Longman.

Coates, J. 2002. Men Talk: Stories in the Making of Masculinities. London: Blackwell.

Costas, G., McEnery, T., Diggle, P. and Baker, P. 2012. The peaks and troughs of corpus-based contextual analysis. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17(2): 151-175.

Davies, M. 2011. Expanding horizons in historical linguistics with the 400-million word corpus of Historical American English. Corpora 7(2): 121-157.

Ensslin, A. and S. Johnson , 2006. Language in the news: investigating representations of Englishness using Wordsmith Tools. Corpora 1 (2): 153-185.

Gardner, R. 2001. When Listeners Talk. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hesselhauf, N. 2005. Collocations in a Learner Corpus. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hunston, S. 2002. Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Knight, D. D. Evans, R. Carter, and S. Adolphs, 2009. HeadTalk, HandTalk and the corpus: towards a framework for multi-modal, multi-media corpus development. Corpora 4 (1): 1-32.

Krishnamurty, R. 2000. Collocation: from silly ass to lexical sets. In C. Heffer, H. Stauntson and G. Fox (Eds). Words in Context: A Tribute to John Sinclair on his Retirement. Birmingham: University of Birmingham. Printed in McEnery, Xiao and Tono (p. 145).

Macalister, J. 2006. The Maori lexical presence in New Zealand English: constructing a corpus for diachronic change. Corpora 1 (1): 85-98.

McCarthy, M., McCarten, J. and Sandiford, 2005. Touchstone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCarthy, M. 2003. ¿Talking back: small interactional response tokens in everyday conversation. Research on Language in Social Interaction 36 (1): 33-63.

McEnery, T. R. Xiao and Y. Tono. 2006. Corpus-based Language Studies: an advanced resource book. Routledge.

Mollin, S. 2009. "I entirely understand" is a Blairism The methodology of identifying idiolectal collocations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14 (3): 367-292.

Murphy, B. and Farr, F. 2012. 'I'm fine girl, and how are you?": the Use of Vocatives in Spoken Irish-English. In: Migge, B. and Ní Chiosáin, M. (eds), New Perspectives in Irish English. VEAW Series. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 203-224.

Murphy, B. Forthcoming. 2013. "I know I have got it in me. I just need to bring it out: Exploring the Use of "I" in a Corpus of Reflective Practic. New versus Experienced Teachers in Development. Classroom Discourse.

Murphy, B. 2011. Gender Identities and Discourse. In: Andersen, G. and Aijmer, K. (eds), Pragmatics of Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 53-78.

Murphy, B. 2010. Corpus and Sociolinguistics: Examining Age in All-female Talk. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Murphy, B. 2009. She's a fucking ticket: the pragmatics of FUCK in Irish English. An age and gender perspective. Corpora 4 (1): 85-106.
Nevalainen, T. 2000. Gender Differences in the Evolution of Standard English. Journal of English Linguistics 28 (1): 38-59.

O'Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M. and R. Carter, 2007. From Corpus to Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pearce, M. 2008. 'Investigating the collocational behaviour of MAN and WOMAN in the BNC using Sketch Engine. Corpora 3 (1): 1-29.

Potts, A. and Baker, P. 2012. 'Does semantic tagging identify cultural change in British and American English?' International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17(3): 295-324.

Renouf, A. 2002. WebCorp: providing a renewable data source for corpus linguists. In S. Granger and S. Petch-Tyson (Eds) Extending the scope of corpus-based research. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 39-58.

Renouf, A. A. Kehoe and D. Mezquiriz, 2004. The Accidental Corpus: issues involved in extracting linguistic information from the web, In K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (Eds), Proceedings of 21st ICAME Conference, University of Gothenburg, May 22-26 2002. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 404-419.

Reppen, R. 2010. Using Corpora in the language classroom. Cambridge.
Reppen, R. S. M. Fitzmaurice and D. Biber, 2002. Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Schilling-Estes, N. 2002. American English Social Dialect Variation and Gender. Journal of English Linguistics 30 (2): 122-137.

Tao, H. 2007. A Corpus-based Investigation of Absolutely and Related Phenomena in Spoken American English¿. Journal of English Linguistics 35 (1): 5-29.

Thelwall, M. 2008. 'Fk yea I swear: cursing and gender in MySpace'. Corpora 2 (1): 83-107.

Tottie, G. and S. Hoffmann, 2006. Tag Questions in British and American English. Journal of English Linguistics 34 (4): 283-311.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Additional Class Delivery Information Wednesdays
Lecture
12.10pm-1.00pm
Paterson's Land G43

Thursdays
Workshop
10.00am-12 noon
Thomson's Land G6
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Brona Murphy
Tel: (0131 6)51 6408
Email: brona.murphy@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs Tara Kay
Tel:
Email: Tara.Kay@ed.ac.uk
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