Data Driven Learning (Languages And Linguistics)

Despite strong interest and support from researchers, Data-driven Learning (DDL) and the use of corpora in language classrooms has failed to become mainstream. One obstacle may be that even teachers interested in DDL may be unsure how to implement it in ways appropriate for their context. This presentation is a brief overview of DDL followed by ideas of how to introduce and utilize DDL with novices, i.e. learners unfamiliar with DDL, especially, though not exclusively, in Japan..

The research aimed at investigating the impact of data-driven learning based program on developing student teachers’ lexico-grammatical performance skills in EFL writing. The participants of the study were sixty (60) second year general section student teachers’ in Damietta University, Faculty of Education, Egypt. The research adopted the quasi-experimental research design. So, there were two groups: an experimental group (n= 30) and a control one (n= 30). To collect data, the researcher used multiple instruments: a lexico-grammatical performance skills checklist, an EFL writing skills checklist, computer and internet skills questionnaire, pre-posttest of lexico-grammatical performance skills and an EFL writing test. The researcher taught the experimental group through a program based on DDL while the control group was taught through the regular method of teaching. The results of the research revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group in the lexico-grammatical performance skills and EFL writing skills in favor of the experimental group. The effect size of the program based on DDL was found to be high. The research recommends using data-driven learning based a program as a technique in teaching EFL skills and as a training method in professional development programs of EFL teachers.
Key Words: data-driven learning (DDL), lexico-grammatical, EFL writing

There many ways to create Web application UI Test Automation Framework. This paper elaborates the creation of the Hybrid Test Automation Framework, and explains the architecture and design of the framework. This Framework is easy to use and incorporate the use of high level programming language allowing object oriented design, permits low level access to the UL components and recover quickly for UI changes in the application under test. The architecture of the framework as multi layer design which isolates the browser UI compounds and test scripts. This Framework Architecture is a merged combination of Library and Data Driven Test Automation Framework. This Framework contents multi packages with classes which isolates the reusable functions and involves the external database on fetching the data. In this framework we can execute the same test case repeatedly in a loop to handle different test input which is retrieved from the database. Keywords— Test Framework, Data driven Architecture, Library Test Architecture. 1. INTRODUCTION In this paper we discuss about creating and overview of the architecture, design and implementation of a browser automatable hybrid framework. The test framework is based on Library Architecture and Data Driven Architecture; both are simple and effective architectures which are used for automation testing. Library Architecture framework are based on higher implementation of Module Based Testing Framework, which is evolved after Module Based Testing Framework. Data Driven Testing Framework helps the user separation of the test script code and the test input data from each other. It lets the user store the test input data into a separate data file. Combination of both the framework would make am efficient and easy process to automate a Web Based application using Selenium as the automation supporting tool.

This LIA International Conference and Cultural Events 2015 proceeding elaborates how a freeware concordancer named  AntConc facilitates teaching and learning of grammar to 21st century learners and it suggests some activities to encourage students' self-discovery and induction of grammar structure

Grammar, one of the most dynamic language factors, is essential for EFL learners as it supports their overall performance. The present study investigated the effect of using DDL approach and corpus-based activities on teaching grammar to Elementary Saudi students in a preparatory-year program at the University of Tabuk, Tabuk, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study used a pre and post test experimental and control group design. An experimental group and a control group were taught three grammar patterns as follows; The former was taught grammar using corpus-informed (DDL ) material while the latter was taught using non-corpus-informed material (traditional grammar books). The quantitative data were collected through the administration of pre and post tests and an attitude questionnaire. The qualitative data were obtained through teachers’ observations and notes (passive and participant observers). Comparison of the results of pre and post tests scores of both groups revealed a significant improvement in the experimental group achievements and range of progress in grammar learning. Moreover, the attitude questionnaire proved that the experimental group had a positive attitude towards the use of DDL in learning grammar. In addition, the experimental group showed strong interest in exploring corpora for various grammar patterns and agreed that corpora deepened their understanding of grammar meaning and use rather than using traditional grammar books that focuses mainly on form. This enthusiasm for using corpora is significantly correlated with participants’ scores in the post-test.

Corpora have been used in English as a foreign language materials for decades, and native corpora have been present in the classroom by means of direct approaches such as Data-Driven Learning (Johns, T., and P. King 1991. ‘Should you be Persuaded’- Two Samples of Data-Driven Learning Materials. In Classroom Concordancing, 1–16. Birmingham University. English Language Research Journal 4.). However, the suitability of using learners’ output in classroom tasks remains controversial. This paper describes a pilot study in the application of a non-standard direct approach where Spanish university students are invited to reflect on their production. In the experiment, carried out in several sessions during the course, the students were exposed to a selection of erroneous sentences from their compositions. Prior to the classroom activity, the teacher contrasted the learners’ sentences with correct versions produced by native English speakers. A relevant part of the methodology consisted in getting learners collectively involved in finding the errors and suggesting improvements. After that, solutions were discussed through the analysis of the alternative sentences provided by the native students. The results show that students are willing to accept this methodology as a supplement to textbooks’ proposals. We claim that authentic and highly specific learner data obtained from a reliable ad hoc learner corpus and direct exposure to these data through controlled activities may cover certain learners’ needs not found in textbooks.

Koca, F. (2021). Yabancı Dil Öğretiminde Derlem, Derlem Dilbilimi ve Veri Yönlendirmeli Öğrenim Yaklaşımı. H. Asutay (Ed.) Dil Öğretiminde Yeni Teknik ve Yöntemler (s. 163-176) içinde. Çanakkale: Paradigma Akademi. ISBN: 978-625-7431-59-0

Bu çalışmada derlem dilbilimi ile yabancı dil öğretiminin ilişkisi ele alınmıştır. Çok sayıda otantik metinden oluşan bütünce anlamına gelen derlemler temelde referans derlem, özelleştirilmiş derlem, yazı dili derlemi ve konuşma dili derlemi olmak üzere dörde ayrılır. Nitelikli bir derlem otantik olmalı, gerçek dil kullanımı yansıtmalı, derlemdeki veriler yeterince büyük olmalı ve veriler işaretlenmiş olmalıdır. Derlem dilbilimi ise veri grubu olarak derlemler üzerinde çalışan deneye dayalı bir dilbilim disiplinidir. Derlem dilbiliminin temel amacı, bilgisayar hesaplamaları yardımıyla yüksek sayıdaki otantik metinle çalışmak ve doğal dil kullanım özelliklerini tespit etmektir. Derlem dilbilimi, klasik dilbilim araştırmalarının yanında sözlük oluşturma veya yabancı dil öğretimi gibi amaçlarla da kullanılmaktadır. Derlem dilbiliminin yabancı dil öğretimindeki yansıması ise veri yönlendirmeli öğrenim yaklaşımı ile olmuştur. Veri yönlendirmeli öğrenimde yabancı dil öğrencileri derlemleri kullanarak hedef dili keşfeder ve doğal dil kullanımını içselleştirir. Bu yaklaşım öğrenci merkezlidir. Öğretmenler ise öğrencileri yönlendiren ve onlara yardımcı olan bir konumdadır. Derlem dilbiliminin yabancı dil öğretiminde kullanıldığı ikinci bir alan ise ders kitabı, sözlük ve alıştırma oluşturma gibi materyal geliştirmeye yönelik yapılan çalışmalardır. Derlemler sayesinde bu materyallerdeki dil kullanımı, kelime seçimi vb. nitelikler hedef dilin doğal ortamındaki gerçek kullanımıyla daha uyumlu hale getirilebilir. Son olarak, derlem dilbilimi yabancı dil öğretimi alanında yapılan bilimsel araştırmalarda da geniş kullanım alanları bulmaktadır. Yabancı dil öğrencilerinin dil kullanımlarının hedef dildeki referans derlemlerle karşılaştırılması, ders kitaplarındaki söz varlığının referans derlemlerle karşılaştırılması, derlem kullanımının öğrencilerin kelime ve dil bilgisi öğrenimlerine katkısı vb. konulu araştırmalar bu alanda yapılan çalışmalara örnek olarak verilebilir.

Although corpus linguistics has become quite influential in English language teaching in recent years, the actual use of corpora (large, searchable collections of real language, electronic texts) by practicing teachers still seems to be fairly limited. In their introduction to data-driven learning (DDL) in the classroom, Gilquin and Granger (2010) declare, for example, “one reason for not doing DDL might simply be that the teacher does not know enough about corpora and the possibility of using corpora in the classroom” (p. 366). This article aims to help fill this gap, by assisting teachers in understanding potential uses of corpus linguistics for English language teaching (ELT). To do so we will introduce key concepts in this area as well as potential applications for pedagogy, including introductory worksheets for teaching collocations in English as a second and/or foreign language (ESL/EFL) contexts with an online corpus.

A partir de 30 entrevistas en profundidad y semiestructuradas, exploramos cómo utilizan los recursos lingüísticos digitales (traductores, diccionarios, verificadores) 59 preuniversitarios plurilingües españoles (11-17 años), en sus prácticas letradas cotidianas, dentro y fuera del aula. Los estudios previos analizan estos recursos (Buyse 2014) y su potencial utilidad para el aprendizaje verbal (Sinclair ed. 2004), pero carecemos de descripciones etnográficas de las consultas reales de cada uno de estos recursos y de los contextos comunicativos en que suceden. Nuestros datos apuntan que el recurso más popular es el traductor, en situaciones de lectura en L2 y de escritura en L1/L2, seguido por el diccionario y el verificador, en contextos escolares y privados. Las actitudes y prácticas descritas establecen diferencias entre un usuario básico, que emplea un recurso cualquiera de modo mecánico y acrítico, y otro sofisticado y autónomo, que elige conscientemente el recurso según el contexto, muestra conocimientos y destrezas refinados y verifica los resultados obtenidos con varias estrategias (retrotraducción, uso de un tercer idioma, comparar varios recursos, fotografías). Estas prácticas contrastan con las opiniones docentes, que desaconsejan el traductor, favorecen al diccionario o la gramática de autoridad y que prohíben usar ciertos recursos en las clases. Entre otras conclusiones, recomendamos la instrucción del alumnado en el aprovechamiento de estos recursos de manera formal y en el desarrollo de investigaciones más detalladas sobre este campo emergente.

This paper sets out to identify the local teaching conditions in our tertiary education system which might influence the decision of introducing corpus tools in the classroom. Different factors, which are claimed to be challenging for  those who itend to explore corpora with students in the subject of English lexicology, will be looked into. To illustrate these factors, I will analyze my own teaching experience with corpus tools. Some of these relate to  the specific kind of student in the course I teach; other factors have to do with the students' lack of training with corpus and its tools. However, I consider that corpus based activities are highly beneficial to students in a TEFL and content learning in a foreign language environment and point to the usefulness of its implementation in lectures dealing with English lexicology. Regrettably, there is a sill a lot of work to be done before corpus-based approaches become a reality in descriptive linguistics courses.

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large number of sensor nodes which are deployed over an area to perform local computations based on information gathered from the surroundings. Each node in the network is equipped with a battery, but it is almost very difficult to change or recharge batteries; therefore, the crucial question is: “how to prolong the network lifetime to such a long time?” Hence, maximizing the lifetime of the network through minimizing the energy is an important challenge in WSN; sensors cannot be easily replaced or recharged due to their ad-hoc deployment in hazardous
environment. Considering that energy saving acts as one of the hottest topics in wireless sensor networks, we will survey the main techniques used for energy conservation in sensor networks. The main focus of this article is primarily on duty cycling schemes which represent the most compatible technique for energy saving and we also focus on the data-driven approaches that can be used to improve the energy
efficiency. Finally, we will make a review on some communication protocols proposed for sensor networks.

This paper studies the rationale for allowing Data-driven learning (DDL) more prominence in the EFL classroom. After covering some pertinent issues and developments in the field of pedagogic grammar (PG), the case for DDL will be discussed. The last part of this paper features uses of data-driven learning with Japanese university students, with special consideration given to their reactions to this new form of grammar learning.

The present study investigates the impact of the integration of the Cognitive Linguistics (CL) pedagogy into Data-driven learning (DDL) on the learners' acquisition of two sets of English spatial prepositions of verticality, over/under and above/below. The study followed a quasi-experimental design with a control and an experimental group including a pre-test, two instructional treatments, and a post and a delayed post-test for each group. A total of 52 students participated in a two-week instruction on the vertical prepositions. The treatment group (N=26) received a DDL-based CL-inspired instruction, which employed cognitive explanations based on the Principled Polysemy model and concordance activities. The control group (N=26), on the other hand, received traditional instruction (i.e. dictionaries, either electronic or print, as being the only resource). The groups were later compared with respect to their performance on pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test. The statistical analyses revealed that the two teaching methods, the traditional and the DDL-based CL-inspired instruction, helped the students significantly improve their knowledge of the vertical prepositions, yet the latter led to greater learning gains and better retention of knowledge. The findings suggest that the combination of the two instructional pedagogies with the meaningful presentation of the senses of prepositions and the rich context provided for their uses can be quite effective to teach spatial prepositions.

This chapter investigates the role of “Big Data” analysis and data crowdsourcing in shifting power relations with respect to the identification of customary international law. Evidence of states’ practice and legal positions is required in order to determine that a new norm of customary international law has crystallized. And yet, international courts have often settled for anecdotal evidence and impressionistic analysis. However, recent academic works have crowdsourced data collection, compiled big datasets and applied computerized analysis methods to make comprehensive and systematic evaluation of the development of customary norms. I argue that this new mode of knowledge production may democratize both the data collected (giving greater weight to smaller states from the global periphery) and the potential contributors to the production process (including lawyers from different countries and language capabilities). Nevertheless, such production requires scientific sophistication and resources, which once more give actors from rich, developed countries a greater role in developing the law.

This paper presents the proposal of two activities aimed at fostering the acquisition of legal terminology using a DDL (data-driven learning) methodology. The number of pedagogical experiments carried out in this ESP branch is very reduced (Boulton, 2010). This is why the gap in the area must be filled by designing and implementing activities using legal corpora as the source to obtain the information from. The activities presented in section 4 of this study are based on BLaRC, an 8.85 million-word corpus of British judicial decisions designed and compiled by Marín (2013). A review of the literature is also offered in sections 1 and 2, which show the pros and cons of the use of this type of teaching methods, according to the authors cited, and the methodological void existing in the area. This study ends with the proposal of an experimental research design for the implementation of the activities following it, which are conceived to act as support to already existing materials such as textbooks.

Student use of concordancers to explore language, often called data-driven learning, is an area of language learning often read about but infrequently used by instructors. This paper aims to demonstrate an accessible method of introducing learners to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and incorporating its use into the homework of any syllabus through the Word and Phrase website.

Let us suppose that you are a research linguist, tormented by some doubts and questions about the state of your profession, and not constrained by having to repeat a catechism of "known truths" to Linguistics 101 students, and not worried about employment tenure. How would you actually go about tackling "the central problem of linguistics", namely how we acquire and maintain knowledge of the probability of systemic relationships in a language?

This article will review the development of a partially-automated online teaching system developed to help intermediate-level engineering students learn appropriate English phrases in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environment. Expanding on past work in the development of both word and phrase lists for study by students, the Corpus-based Engineering English Materials (CEEM) project creates a set of both downloadable traditional paper-based materials as well as interactive online materials for students, teachers, and researchers based on the Engineering English Corpus (EEC). The EEC is a corpus of approximately 1.2 million words compiled from the textbooks used in the international engineering program at King Mongkut’s University of Technology (KMUTT). Rather than focusing solely on keywords which the students learn to use properly through regular coursework, these materials highlight useful collocations, and genre-specific uses of common words and phrases (multi-word units, frames, etc.) that are often left unnoticed in a more traditional lexical approach to teaching language. The online interactive materials, based only on a small set of words, phrases, and sentences from the corpus, are able to generate a relatively large number of unique exercises for students. These exercises, through the careful use of scaffolding allow students to not only practice content that they have previously learned, but to in fact learn new material that they have not previously studied. In this way, the materials can be used either by students alone, or in conjunction with in-class use of the paper-based materials.

The aim of this paper is to examine the use of a learner corpus and a corpus of native speakers in foreign or second language (L2) teaching and learning in Japan. It is revealed that learner corpora can function as a reference to identify and clarify difficult materials for a particular learner group, which is significant step for better language learning (Meunier, 2002, p. 125; Nesselhauf, 2004, p. 125-126). In this paper, two corpora are employed in language learning; the Japanese English as a Foreign Language Learner Corpus (JEFLL corpus) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). These corpora represent the language produced by native speakers and non-native speakers with a particular language background, respectively American first language (L1) speakers of English and Japanese learners of English. It is arguable that L2 teaching and learning with these corpora will allow learners to compare language patterns between native and non-native speakers of English. This paper proposes and discusses possible activities using the corpora. These concrete examples are provided to facilitate an understanding of the difficulties faced by Japanese learners of English in classroom practice; and additionally, demonstrate the efficacy of applying corpora to scaffold learning and pedagogic practice.

In many educational institutions in Turkey, including universities, state schools, and private schools, a common problem in grammar teaching is the lack of authenticity due to the wide use of rule-based teaching. Consequently, some teachers prefer to adopt a deductive teaching approach with more explanation for grammar structures and less use of examples from various contexts. This case may sometimes end up with a traditional English lesson with mechanical exercises, as students call it, “Ali goes to cinema” kind of exercises, and it is not uncommon for students to complain about the frequency of encountering the same examples given on certain grammar topics, examples that often fail to be attuned with current real life situations, which obviously limits their productive skills by its failure to stimulate their ability to think of similar simple sentences. In order to overcome this, we propose a technique based on Data-Driven Language Learning with particular regard to corpus linguistics, and we consider the learner as research workers constructing their language themselves, and learning with less language description, hence they are expected to succeed in integrating meaning and form more. In this respect, the purpose of this article is to provide some insight into modern practices of teaching English language, and specifically to show a model lesson for grammar teaching from a critical perspective towards currently used English grammar books and textbooks. It will provide a brief and practical introduction to easily accessible concordances which can be utilized to assign the learner a constructive role by supplying him/her with input from real-life contexts, while touching on the principle of awareness with a few suggestions by using our data in our classes. It will also provide a brief outline of how online and offline programs can be easily adapted for grammar teaching and to generate authentic in-class materials.

The Aranea project is aimed at building a family of Gigaword corpora for languages taught at Slovak Universities. The corpora are composed of texts downloaded from the Internet by means of (open-source) automated procedures and further processed by standard NLP tools for the respective languages.
Our paper gives an overview of the Project, and shows some query functions of the NoSketch Engine web interface that are suitable for linguistic analysis of French idioms and proverbs.

In this paper, the aim is to use corpus data in classroom situations for the processing of specific grammatical items. DDL (Data-Driven Learning) techniques are exploited with a group of university students in the double degree of Business and Tourism in our institution. Two grammar comprehension tests were administered to compare their results with another group that focused on the same grammatical points as delivered by an upper-intermediate textbook. The findings reveal that the DDL group did better in the grammatical points. Most students also felt that knowledge had been gained by relying on the DDL language for grammatical development.

Ambient Intelligence is nowadays an active research field. As a key part of this concept, learning architectures for the control of the devices in an intelligent building must be developed, where the goal is to control the environment via a set of devices using an intelligent agent which should work in a non-intrusive manner to satisfy the preferences of the user. Mainly, we have focused our attention over fuzzy logic controllers (FLC) for the internal structure of the agent. The main motivation for the work described in this paper is to check different alternatives in order to select a suitable method for the off-line data driven automatic generation of FLC for the agent. We have performed the experiments with real data gathered from the Essex Intelligent Dormitory.

This paper argues for an approach to LSP in which teachers and students compile their own do-it-yourself corpora using specialised texts in their area of study and teaching. I show that it is relatively easy to build a rough and ready corpus of this type and illustrate how it can be used both indirectly in the construction of materials for a German reading course and directly by EAP students taking a course on editing doctoral theses. It is suggested that both LSP teachers and students can benefit from such a corpus due its specificity and relevance to their needs. For teachers, a DIY corpus provides a means of familiarising themselves with the discourse of a specialised area and a source of authentic examples for materials production, while students particularly value the corpus as a lexico-grammatical reference resource.

Mémoire de Master 1 FLE, sous la direction de Mme Dany Amiot.

L'apprentissage d'une langue étrangère, et sa maîtrise, mettent en jeu de nombreux facteurs : le lexique, la grammaire, la syntaxe, la phonologie font partie des paramètres les plus saillants, présents dans les méthodes d'apprentissage et largement exploités. La phraséologie, définie comme « l'ensemble des unités polysegmentales codées en langue, que ce soit dans le système ou dans la norme » (Hausmann & Blumenthal, 2006), est un domaine de moindre visibilité. Régies par les règles de la syntaxe sans relever de la syntaxe pure, ses unités participent pourtant à l'idiomaticité de la langue et y sont omniprésentes.
Ainsi, les unités phraséologiques, dont les limites et définitions sont encore instables, sont très globalement des structures intuitivement attendues (et produites) par les locuteurs natifs dans un contexte donné. Partant de ce constat, et d'une observation sur le terrain suggérant que la manipulation de la phraséologie constitue un apport capital dans l'apprentissage d'une langue étrangère, je tenterai ici de présenter les caractéristiques des unités phraséologiques les plus remarquables, notamment les collocations et les colligations, mais aussi d'identifier quelques éléments qui témoignent de leur importance dans la langue et par extension de leur pertinence dans l'enseignement du Français Langue Étrangère.
Que sont les collocations et les colligations ? Quel est leur statut dans la langue ? Que peuvent-elles apporter à la didactique, et quelles propositions existent pour les y intégrer ?

The introduction of legal English as a compulsory subject in the curriculum of the Law Degrees taught at Spanish universities due to the implementation of the Bologna Reform has led to the design of syllabuses which are intended to enable students to become proficient users of this English variety with both academic and professional purposes. This paper presents a corpus-based proposal for the grading of materials for the teaching of legal vocabulary which can be extrapolated to other varieties of English for Specific and Academic Purposes (ESAP). In order to exemplify it, a sample list of 33 crime nouns (obtained from the legal English textbooks consulted) has been examined in terms of their frequency, keyness and text range values in an ad hoc legal corpus of 2.6 million words, UKSCC. After doing so, Chung’s (2003) automatic term recognition (ATR) method has been applied so as to establish their level of specialisation. Our proposal relies on the assumption that the
information obtained after taking these different parameters into consideration might be helpful for the ESAP instructor to rank the vocabulary inventories obtained from specialised
corpora so that the materials derived from them can be graded according to the students’ needs.

Os trabalhos agrupados neste volume exploram, através do viés da Linguística de Corpus, aplicações para o ensino de línguas e de tradução, além de oferecerem subsídios teóricos e reflexões sobre essa emergente subárea dos estudos linguísticos. Corpora no ensino de línguas estrangeiras é o primeiro volume de seu gênero no mercado editorial brasileiro e inova pelo tema e por congregar pesquisadores experientes e professores de línguas, que juntos oferecem ao leitor subsídios para aguçar a sua curiosidade e colocar em prática, na sua sala de aula, algumas das sugestões oferecidas pelos autores. O livro, além de estabelecer mais firmemente o perfil da pesquisa e das aplicações da Linguística de Corpus no Brasil, é de interesse para professores de línguas, tradutores, linguistas e outros profissionais da área de Letras, que certamente nele encontrarão o alicerce para o desenvolvimento de suas competências nas metodologias e aplicações deste estimulante campo do saber. [Heliana Mello / Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais]



A linguística de corpus já está conosco há algumas décadas, mas ainda é relativamente escassa a sua utilização como ferramenta para aperfeiçoar conteúdos e práticas de ensino-aprendizagem de línguas no Brasil. Este contexto confere particular importância a este livro. Os seus autores estão entre os pioneiros no lançamento da linguística de corpus no país. E os nove capítulos desta obra refletem aplicações práticas em diversos domínios, como o do ensino de línguas em geral, da tradução e das linguagens médica, acadêmica e comercial, abrangendo, além do português, diferentes idiomas, como o inglês, o espanhol, o alemão e o francês. Ao centrar-se na prática, este volume abre portas ao universo de oportunidades que a linguística de corpus oferece, estimulando a busca de conteúdos didáticos inovadores, baseados na observação empírica, superando muitas vezes a nossa intuição. Corpora no ensino de línguas estrangeiras é, por isso, leitura obrigatória para pesquisadores e professores de línguas e de tradução que queiram obter um panorama do que se pode fazer e do que vem sendo feito com as novas ferramentas oferecidas pela linguística de corpus. [Ana Frankenberg-Garcia / Universidade Nova de Lisboa]

Data-driven learning (DDL, Johns, 1991), involving students’ hands-on use of corpora for self-guided language learning, is a methodology now increasingly used in many tertiary contexts to enhance the teaching of disciplinary postgraduate thesis writing. However, there are still few studies tracking students’ actual engagement with corpora for DDL. This mixed-methods study reports on the tracking of students’ corpus use via a purpose-built corpus query and data visualisation platform integrated into a large postgraduate disciplinary thesis writing programme at a university in Hong Kong. Data on corpus usage history (e.g. times of access, duration of use), query syntax (e.g. query lexis / phraseology and use of wildcards and part-of-speech tags), query function (e.g. frequency lists / distribution, concordance sorting and collocation) and query filters (e.g. searches by faculty, discipline, or thesis section) were collected from 327 students spanning over 11,000 individual corpus queries. The results show significant interdisciplinary and inter-/intra-user trends and variation in the use of particular corpus functions and query syntax adopted by corpus users. Students varied in the type of knowledge (e.g. domain-specific, language-specific) they were accessing, and frequently went beyond the exemplars of the DDL course materials to generate unique queries under their own initiative. Qualitative case study data from three corpus users’ activity logs also show distinctive individual corpus engagement by query frequency and function. This data provides a clearer insight into what students actually do during DDL, and the different directions and trajectories that individual users take as a result of DDL. All accompanying DDL tasks are also included as supplementary materials.

A common critique of data-driven learning (DDL) and the direct use of corpora in the classroom is that many, if not most, of the corpora available today are inappropriate for language learners because the level of the language in them is too high and the language fragments presented in concordance lines confuse learners. Parallel corpora offer a potential way forward for DDL that addresses these concerns by providing L1 support to learners engaged in DDL activities. This article briefly describes what parallel corpora are and how they can ameliorate certain concerns regarding DDL.

This presentation examines attempts to use Data-Driven Learning (DDL) from 1997 to 2000 at Nagaoka National College of Technology in Japan. After a background discussion of this school’s teaching environment, the reasons for attempting a corpus-based, Data-driven Approach to meet the needs of the school’s language curriculum development will be explained. The approach taken in materials design and the response of various stakeholders will be studied. This presentation concludes with some reflections, and the implications of this project for others interested in undertaking a similar enterprise in their teaching environments will be considered.

The paper presents the design and operation of a FREE OPEN-ACCESS ONLINE platform for WORD FORMATION PRACTICE (check out the link that accompanies this paper). The system is based on a pre-defined list of pairs of base and derived forms and usage examples drawn automatically from the British National Corpus. A procedure for the extraction of example sentences is outlined. Results of 372 users' interacting with the system for over 4.5 months are reviewed. The question about what factors influence users' evaluation of specific exercises as more difficult is addressed. The results may be relevant in the area of language testing, preparation of examination materials, student-teacher online interaction and teaching English word formation.

Online exercises: http://wa.amu.edu.pl/~krynicki/wf/
Full content of Table 2 p. 6: http://wa.amu.edu.pl/~krynicki/wf/table2.htm
Prezi presentation: http://prezi.com/cgpsilarvlzm/corpus-based-online-word-formation-exercises-for-advanced-learners-of-english/

Diante da inflência das tecnologias da informação e comunicação TICs)  e da aprendizagem de línguas assistida por computador (CALL – Computer Assisted Language Learning) no ensino de inglês como
Língua Estrangeira (LE), as quais possibilitam novos olhares para a prática didáticopedagógica, objetivamos, neste artigo, refletir acerca das aplicações de corpora no ensino, principalmente no que concerne à Abordagem Orientada por Dados (Data-Driven Learning Approach). Trata-se de uma abordagem centrada no aprendiz, o qual, mediado pelo
professor, busca entender o funcionamento da língua observando-a em um corpus. Nesse contexto, fundamentados em Johns (1991b), em Boulton (2009b, 2010) e em Boulton e Tyne (2013), examinamos os principais desafios para sua implementação, bem como  problematizamos sua relação com a noção de autonomia na aprendizagem. Ademais, partindo dessa reflexão e do instrumental teórico-metodológico da Linguística de Corpus, exploramos didaticamente um corpus de resumos científicos da área de
linguística a fi de auxiliar a escrita desse gênero textual quanto ao reconhecimento de padrões lexicogramaticais, por licenciandos
em Letras, especialmente os iniciantes na pesquisa acadêmica. Ao propor este trabalho, esperamos despertar nesse público o interesse
pela utilização de recursos tecnológicos que visam a processos de aprendizagem autônomos a partir de corpora, de modo que possam conscientizar-se da existência desses recursos e possam aplicá-los em suas práticas acadêmicas cotidianas.

The use of linguistic corpora in language teaching has spread considerably in the last twenty-five
years thanks to the pioneer work by Johns [1], who coined the term data-driven learning (DDL,
henceforth); Sinclair [2], who developed the concept further on; or Boulton [3], amongst others. DDL
teaching methods promote language study based on the observation of concordances, that is,
examples of the authentic use of keywords in context (KWC), which are retrieved from a linguistic
corpus by running software programs specifically designed to that end, such as Wordsmith [4].
According to the literature on the subject, there exist arguments for and against the use of corpora in
language teaching and there has been a fairly small number of pedagogical experiments in English for
specific purposes (ESP) [3], particularly in the field of telecommunication English. This work suggests
two activities for teaching terminology within this area applying DDL-based methodology, together with
a pedagogical experimental model for its future implementation. Such activities are not intended to
substitute any other teaching material like course books; they are rather envisaged as a supplement to
language exposure and/or reinforcement of terminology. The language samples of this specialized
variety are stored in the Telecommunication English Corpus (TEC) [5], designed and compiled ad hoc
for language research owing to the scarcity of technical corpora available.

With the increasing recognition of the pedagogical applications of corpus linguistics, there has been a growing interest in developing teachers’ corpus literacy to popularize the use of corpora in language education. This longitudinal study investigated Arab Gulf EFL student teachers’ immediate and long-term responses to corpus literacy instruction. After teaching a corpus literacy component to two classes of student teachers in a graduate computer-assisted language learning course they attended, the author collected focus group data about their views on this instruction and their own expected future uses of corpora in language learning, teaching and research. Two years later, a group of these student teachers ( n = 19) responded to a follow-up questionnaire exploring their beliefs about corpus literacy integration and their multiple uses of corpora. The student teachers reported very positive immediate and long-term perceptions of corpus literacy instruction, but it was found that such instruction has not brought about all the desired changes in their long-term uses of online corpora as a linguistic and pedagogical resource, or their attitudes towards doing corpus-based TESOL research. However, it is expected that the popularization benefits gained from corpus literacy integration could lead to better future developments in using corpora for language education and research purposes in the target context.

The chapter reports on a study exploring the use of data-driven learning as a way of developing the phraseological competence of L2 learners attending secondary school. The study followed a quasi-experimental design in which fifteen non-transparent phrases were presented to two groups of L1-Polish learners of English representing two different instructional conditions: paper-based DDL and a dictionary-based approach. A control group with no experimental treatment was also included for comparison purposes. The target phrases (e.g. ‘by far’ or ‘straight away’) were selected from Martinez and Schmitt’s (2012) PHRASE list, and learners’ knowledge of these items was measured by means of two tests: a multiple-choice test of meaning recognition and an L1-L2 translation test of meaning recall. The design also included a questionnaire tapping into students’ perceptions of the treatments. Results revealed that DDL was more effective in enhancing learners’ phraseological knowledge, leading to modest gains at both levels of phraseological mastery. The questionnaire data confirmed that corpus-based exercises were perceived as beneficial; however, strong positive attitudes toward the use of dictionaries were also found. The chapter discusses the benefits and challenges of introducing DDL to lower-level L2 students and concludes by discussing the implications of the study for secondary-school language education.

In an open research and development project with FLAX at the University of Waikato, we have developed domain-specific language learning collections, and game-based mobile apps and eReaders for Android devices, to support second language learning. Research contexts include English for Specific Academic Purposes, English for translation studies, and Massive Open Online Courses.

Open Data, Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Open Access (OA) publications provide a compelling opportunity for Computer and Mobile Assisted Language Learning (CALL, MALL) for support with second language learning. OERs and OA publications supply large corpora of linguistic material relevant to particular subject areas, including text, images, audio and video. Such domain-specific corpora can be automatically analysed and enriched by linking to larger open linguistic datasets, including those derived from Wikipedia and Google. Domain-specific OERs and OA documents are transformed into a flexible resource that learners can browse and query in order to extend their ability to understand the language used in authentic communication contexts, and to help them express themselves more fluently and eloquently in specific domains through formal written assessments and informal course communications.

To illustrate this idea, an existing open-source language-learning system, FLAX, is applied to Open Data, OERs, OA research and government publications, and openly licensed MOOC content for the development of domain-specific language collections. For demonstration purposes, I will use a single running example, the Law Collections in FLAX, but the approach is fully automated and can be applied to any language collection. These law collections in FLAX were developed due to the scarcity of reliable specific resources for learning legal English and include resources such as the 8.85 million-word British Law Reports Corpus (BLaRC), derived from openly published judicial decisions. I intend to demonstrate and discuss how our open research and resources development methodology for building domain-specific digital language collections can be shared across a variety of second language contexts for both online and offline use. I will also present an overview of a multi-site research study into how theses open Law Collections in FLAX have been successfully reused to support second language learning across traditional classroom-based English for Specific Academic Purposes and legal English translation programmes (the UK and Spain), and in MOOCs (edX with Harvard Law School and Coursera).

The aim of this presentation is to report on an experiment with Master’s students in translation. After translating a text at the beginning of the academic year with all the tools they found to be relevant, the students were taught on how to compile and use electronic corpora to uncover systemic interlanguage differences in usage between two languages, English and French. The type of text retained for this study is obituaries of celebrities. Students compiled their own corpus of obituaries in original English and original French (DIY or disposable corpus) and compared lexical and grammatical usage between the two languages, with a specific emphasis on referring expressions to the deceased: First name+Family Name (e.g. Michael Jackson), Family Name (e.g. Jackson), Title+Name (e.g. Mr. Jackson), First Name (e.g. Michael), Nickname (e.g. Bambi), Lexical Descriptions with or without Names (e.g. the American singer), Pronominal Forms (e.g. he). After observing the differences between the two languages, students were asked to revise their first translation and provide feedback on the types of changes that were made.