Corpora Applications to Economics Presentations: A Case Study Volume 2 Issue 2. November 2006 By Renata Suzuki  

Oleh:

Suzuki, Renata

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: The Asian ESP Journal vol. 2 no. 2 (2006), page 54-72.
Fulltext: Untitled4.pdf (309.87KB)

Isi artikel

he field of corpus studies with its exploration of language in use has revolutionized our understanding of language and how it works. However, changes in attitudes to language teaching are only slowly coming about, aided by recent textbooks which incorporate authentic texts and findings based on ‘real’ language. Particularly in the world of ESP, where student needs strongly dictate course curriculum, adequate textbooks may not always be available. The sphere of Economics presentations is such an example. This paper offers a case study of how the teacher can usefully implement a corpus study to tailor presentation curriculum and provide information which facilitates student learning at their zones of proximal development. The study examines presentation relevance objectives according to a framework of strategies (Sperber &Wilson, 1986,1995; Dor, 2003). It then considers how to choose the most relevant corpus to the presentation mode. By examining two kinds of corpus data, frequency and collocation, the paper shows how the teacher can obtain results directly related to student language challenges and help students meet relevance objectives. The study suggests cognitive and affective benefits to students including informed choice of language and reduced fear of error. The paper finally highlights three areas of further research: the pragmatic function of ‘ostension’ (Sperber & Wilson) in presentations, the relevance of the diachronic nature of corpora to the classroom, and pedagogical issues concerning which type of corpus data may be most profitable and accessible presented directly to students or in a teacherled condensed form.

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