How language learners can benefit from corpora, or not

Abstract

This paper discusses how learners can come into contact with corpora and the different ways in which corpora can be useful to them. There are three main ways in which this can be done, and rather than competing against each other, I see these three different gateways to corpora as being complementary. I also wish to show that, as with any kind of materials and activities developed under the aegis of a particular methodology and approach to learning, some uses of corpora in the classroom can be very effective, while others may not work at all.

Keywords

• language learning
• corpora
• data-driven learning
• computer-assisted language learning