Corpus Literacy and Applications in Norwegian Upper Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study explores corpus literacy and pedagogical corpus applications among in-service teachers who have corpus linguistics in their educational background, along with their students of English in upper secondary school in Norway. In order to investigate the multifaceted nature of educational practice, the study took a wide perspective encompassing aspects of digitalization in education, general pedagogy, and corpus linguistics. The students (n=154) answered an online questionnaire and four teachers were interviewed. The data are discussed in light of a technology integration framework that takes into account teacher knowledge, resource availability, teacher beliefs, as well as student epistemologies. Findings show little to no corpus literacy among the students, with the exception of one student. The interviews show that the teachers have largely avoided corpora in their teaching practice. One reason why the teachers chose to do so was due to inaccessibility related to paywalls, registration requirements and functionality restrictions. Other potential reasons that were uncovered were tied to their perception of learner competencies, how the affordances of corpora fit their curricular focus, and how their epistemic beliefs about language learning influenced their choices.

Corpus Linguistics in Second Language Teacher Education

“…Yet, the impact of corpora on the everyday practices of language teachers and learners seems to have been much more modest. This has been attested by a number of surveys carried out among practising language teachers (see, e.g., Karlsen and Monsen, 2020;Kavanagh 2021, for a diagnosis of the situation in Norway). This slower uptake of the direct uses of corpora in pedagogic practices has been recurrently lamented by a relatively small group of corpus enthusiasts -mainly researchers who are corpus linguists and instructors teaching in language programmes at the tertiary level (Chambers, 2019).…”

Norwegian in-service teachers’ perspectives on language corpora in teaching English

“…Also, the interview data contribute to an area of research in which there are few face-to-face interviews on the topic of corpora with any kind of teacher (Breyer, 2011, pp. 117-154;Karlsen & Monsen, 2020;Kavanagh, 2021). The purpose of using semi-structured interviews as a method is explained below.…”

“…The in-service teacher perspective is not entirely unexplored: in some cases, there are in-service teacher informants mixed in with preservice teachers (Ebrahimi & Faghih, 2016;Zareva, 2017), and perspectives of specifically inservice teachers are occasionally the focus (Karlsen & Monsen 2020;Kavanagh, 2021). The latter studies included teachers who were previously educated in corpus use (Karlsen & Monsen, 2020), or who directly apply corpora in their teaching (Kavanagh, 2021). The present study's informants differ, in that they were not already using corpora at the onset of the study.…”

Corpus Literacy Training for In-Service English Language Teachers

“…Earlier studies on implementing corpora into classroom practices (Breyer, 2009;Chambers et al, 2011;Leńko-Szymańska, 2014) illustrate that teachers who were instructed explicitly in their use and encouraged to apply what they learned become highly skilled in using corpora to manage their instruction and make appropriate language teaching decisions. Although researchers have also investigated corpus literacy for in-service language teachers (Çalışkan & Kuru Gönen, 2018;Chen et al, 2019;Karlsen & Monsen, 2020;Kavanagh, 2021;Lin & Lee, 2015;Ma et al, 2022;Mukherjee, 2004), there is still a need for further research. In previous studies, for example, Karlsen and Monsen (2020) interviewed four upper secondary school teachers to learn about their perspectives on integrating corpora in their teaching.…”

“…Although researchers have also investigated corpus literacy for in-service language teachers (Çalışkan & Kuru Gönen, 2018;Chen et al, 2019;Karlsen & Monsen, 2020;Kavanagh, 2021;Lin & Lee, 2015;Ma et al, 2022;Mukherjee, 2004), there is still a need for further research. In previous studies, for example, Karlsen and Monsen (2020) interviewed four upper secondary school teachers to learn about their perspectives on integrating corpora in their teaching. They found that, although teachers had acquired corpus literacy, they avoided using corpora in class.…”