Use of Corpus-Based Classroom Activities in Developing Academic Awareness in Doctoral Students

The corpus-based approach in language education has driven an array of studies over the past few decades, including its application in developing academic awareness in second-language learners of English for academic purposes. Most publications that show ways of incorporating corpus-based classroom activities (C-BCA) concern concordance lines and lexico-grammatical studies with reference to teacher feedback. The present study examines postgraduates’ perception of C-BCA in English for academic purposes classes. A class of 10 postgraduate students from Samara University, Russia, participated in the research. Questionnaire results showed a positive perception of using C-BCA as a tool for writing assignments. The study also concerns an analysis of the students’ results in the writing assignments as a part of their academic awareness. Specifically, this sample study shows interdependence between the positive dynamics of postgraduates’ perceptions of C-BCA and good results of a writing examination.

REFERENCES:

• Benesch, S. (2001). Critical English for academic purposes: Theory, politics, and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Bennett, G., Bricker, M. (2006). Book review: Corpus-based Classroom Activities. HEIS News July 2006: 25, Issue
• Bucheister, J. Toward a theory of academic self-awareness. Teaching and Learning together in Higher Education. US: Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College, 2016.
• Burns, A. (2010). Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for practitioners. New York: Routledge.
• Cohen, A., Glasman, H., Rosenbaum-Cohen, P.R., Ferrara, J., & Fine, J. (1988). Reading English for specialized purposes: Discourse analysis and the use of standard informants. In P. Carrell, J. Devine, & D. Eskey (Eds.), Interactive approaches to second language reading, 152 – 167.
• Conrad, S. (1999). The importance of corpus-based research for language teachers. System, 27(1), 1 – 18.
• Cooper, H. (1998). Synthesizing Research: A Guide for Literature Reviews. Applied social research methods series, Vol. 2
• Coxhead, A. (2000). A new AWL. TESOL Quarterly 34(2), 213 – 238.
• Coxhead, A., Byrd, P. (2007). Preparing writing teachers to teach the vocabulary and grammar of academic prose. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 3, 129 – 147.
• Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gledhill, C. (2000). The discourse function of collocation in research article introductions. English for Specific Purposes, 19(2), 115 – 135.
• Creswell, J.W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2ⁿd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Goatly, A. (2000). Critical reading and writing: An introductory coursebook. London, England: Routledge.
• Hyland, K. (2003). Second language writing. Cambridge: Cambridge university press.
• Hyland, K. (2007). Is there an “Academic vocabulary”? TESOL Quarterly, 41,2, 235 – 253.
• Johns, T. (1994). From printout to handout: grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning. In T. Odlin, ed., Perspective on pedagogical grammar, 293 – 313. Cambridge: Cambridge university press.
• Koptyaeva, N., Oveshkova, A. (2016). The use of web technologies in academic writing. 5t Information school for young researchers (Eds.). Ekaterinburg: UB RAS Central Scientific Library. P. 55 – 60.
• Luke, A. (2004). Two takes on being critical. In B. Norton & K. Toohey (Eds.), Critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 21 – 29). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Reppen, R. (2010). Using corpora in the language classroom. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Saeed, N.A. & Waly, S. (2009). Corpus for Classrooms: Ideas for Material Design, Proceedings of the 10t METU ELT Convention. Retrieved from: http://dbe.metu.edu.tr/convention/
• Teaching and Learning by Doing Corpus Analysis (2000). Proceedings of the FourThInternational Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora, Graz 19 – 24 July, 1 Retrieved from: http://www.google.ru/books?hl=ru&lr=&id=8YA6wJ6FMwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Teaching+and+Learning+by+Doing+Corpus+Analysis&ots=K8E8-
  
• Tribble, C. (2002). Corpora and corpus analysis: New windows on academic writing. In Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 131 – 149). Harlow, England: Longman
• Wallace, C. (2003). Critical reading in language education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Worthington, D., & Nation, P. (1996). Using texts to sequence the introduction of new vocabulary in an EAP course. RELC Journal, 27(2), 1 – 11.
• Yoon, H. (2008). More than a linguistic reference: the influence of corpus technology on L2 academic writing. Language Learning & Technology. June 2008, 2, 12, 31 – 48.