Elturki, Eman (Washington State University)
Evidence from recent empirical research has demonstrated the effectiveness of corpus data in enhancing students’ lexicogrammatical knowledge and critical thinking (e.g. Luo, 2016; Nurmukhamedov, 2016; Yoon & Jo, 2014). Such linguistic resources provide students with access to words and their “associated lexical and grammatical patterns in different contexts [which as a result] allows learners to develop a greater sense of […] form, meaning and use” (Wu, Li, Witten, & Yu, 2016, p. 18). In this Practice-Oriented Presentation, teachers will learn about FLAX (Flexible Language Acquisition) which is a powerful corpus-based resource designed specifically for English language learners. FLAX is a virtual library containing various authentic language collections from corpus data. It is open source with built-in tools for exploring language patterns. It has user-friendly interfaces and is designed for learners and teachers. This session will shed light on three valuable collections in FLAX: (1) The “FLAX Resource Collections” which consists of four resources for learning collocations and common phrases in English. (2) “British Academic Written English Collections” which offer rich resources for developing academic English. (3) The “FLAX Distributed Collections” which are designed for beginner and intermediate ESL learners in which students can read and listen to reading passages at their level, learn about parts of speech, expand their vocabulary including collocations. Learners can also practice what they have learned in the collection through interactive games. The presenter will share these resources, illustrate how they can be used by students and teachers, and discuss pedagogical implications.
References
Luo, Q. (2016). The effects of data-driven learning activities on EFL learners’ writing development. SpringerPlus, 5(1), 1255.
Nurmukhamedov, U. (2016). The contribution of collocation tools to collocation correction in second language writing. International Journal of Lexicography, 30(4), 454-482.
Wu, S., Li, L., Witten, I. H., & Yu, A. (2016). Constructing a collocation learning system from the Wikipedia corpus. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), 6(3), 18-35.
Yoon, H. and Jo, J. (2014) Direct and indirect access to corpora: An exploratory case study comparing students’ error correction and learning strategy use in L2 writing. Language Learning and Technology, 18(1): 96–117.
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