CorpusLAB

CorpusLAB is a new FREE site for language learners and language teachers. CorpusLAB is designed to make use of the results of corpus analysis to promote language learning based on real English used in different settings.

Students can use the site to take a variety of exercises created by teachers. Go to the Student pages and select a topic area (Academic English, Business English, etc.). Students who register will be able to keep track of their progress.

Teachers can use the site in different ways. The central engine of the site is a series of exercise authoring tools. The exercises, fill-the-gap, multiple-choice, matching, reorder, and categorise, follow the traditional pattern, but they are designed in a way that promotes the learning of collocations and phrasal patterns. For example, the matching exercise allows up to five columns of items rather than the usual two, thereby providing practice in a range of collocations and phrases.

Another feature of the site is the sharing of corpus resources and corpus-informed materials such as wordlists, handouts, ppts, etc. One of the aims of the site is to build up resources for specialised English: Medical English, English for Tourism, and so on. In addition, teachers have access to a corpus of spoken professional English via a simple concordancer. A utility for the analysis of potential teaching texts is also under development.

April 15, 2008 The site has been redesigned. Some more programming is being carried out to modify the Fill-the-Gap exercise and to add an automatic exercise generating component. Once this is complete, some guidelines, sample exercises, and resources will be added. Currently, there are only test exercises.

Other CorpusLabs Catherine Smith (Troy University) is working on writing.corpusLAB.com, which will make use of Google Docs and LiveHelp as well as exercises to promote writing in English. I am looking for people interested in promoting the use of corpora and data-rich approaches to language learning to develop a version of the corpusLAB site for other purposes or other languages. For further info, send email to Michael Barlow (barlow@athel.com).