English Corpus Linguistics

Abstract

English Corpus Linguistics is a step-by-step guide to creating and analyzing linguistic corpora. It begins with a discussion of the role that corpus linguistics plays in linguistic theory, demonstrating that corpora have proven to be very useful resources for linguists who believe that their theories and descriptions of English should be based on real rather than contrived data. Charles F. Meyer goes on to describe how to plan the creation of a corpus, how to collect and computerize data for inclusion in a corpus, how to annotate the data that are collected, and how to conduct a corpus analysis of a completed corpus. The book concludes with an overview of the challenges that corpus linguists face to make both the creation and analysis of corpora much easier undertakings than they currently are. Clearly organized and accessibly written, this book will appeal to students of linguistics and English language.

Towards Autonomy in Language Learning: Theoretical Implications and Practical Applications

“…The corpus was analysed through the KWIK (Key Word In Context) concordancer, allowing the examination of individual lexical item frequency and common collocations (cf. Hunston 2002;Meyer 2002). The results highlight a hierarchy of terms which are frequently used today in reference to teachers and the multiple roles they are required to cover in what we may define as 'post-modern society', outlined by Hargreaves (op.…”

“…While much research has been carried out into autonomous learning processes, it is only relatively recently that these theories have been experimented in language learning, which differs somewhat from a more general approach to autonomy in other contexts. According to Naiman et al (1978), for example, a good language learner will have good social skills, analytical skills, organizational abilities and strong sense of motivation.…”

“…' (J. S. Bruner, 1986) It is the purpose of this paper to examine some aspects of autonomy in language learning with a specific focus on the transition from high school to the first year at university. This transition can be problematic, in that study at a university level requires a degree of independence and initiative which is not generally required in the supportive learning environment of the school system.Our starting point is identifying those characteristics which make a good language learner (Naiman et al 1978;Johnson 2001;Maftoon and Seyyedrezaei 2012) and to demonstrate that these characteristics are largely an innate capacity of some and not all learners. …”

“…Our starting point is identifying those characteristics which make a good language learner (Naiman et al 1978;Johnson 2001;Maftoon and Seyyedrezaei 2012) and to demonstrate that these characteristics are largely an innate capacity of some and not all learners. …”

Refining the use of the web (and web search) as a language teaching and learning resource

“…Search engines and other portals impose various taxonomic structures on Web items and resources. As Meyer (2002) notes, Yahoo categorizes documents and websites into fields such as Arts and Humanities and Science Education, each having further subcategories -both in terms of content itself, and of information sources such as journals or magazine articles. Similarly Robb (2003) explores limiting searches to within particular 'educated' domains using site names ending in "edu", "ac.uk", "edu.au" and "jp".…”