Experiencing Vocabulary Learning Using Small

Language Corpora

Višnja Kabalin Borenić, Department of Business Foreign Languages

Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb

Sanja Marinov, Department of Foreign Languages and PE

Faculty of Economics, University of Split

Martina Mencer Salluzzo, Department of Languages and Culture

Vern – University of Applied Sciences, Zagreb

Abstract

This article researches university students' responses to a set of

exercises based on authentic corpus material. It aims to add to

the database of potential exercises derived directly from corpus

material. The research involved 51 students of business and

tourism who were asked to complete a variety of exercises

derived from corpus material and record their impressions in a

journal. Since they combine quantitative and qualitative data

(students’ success rates and comments), our results provide

reliable guidelines for the design of corpus-based exercises.

Research results revealed that some learners appreciate the

benefits of corpus consultation while others find it too time

consuming or demanding. On the whole, the respondents

recognised the benefits of autonomous learning, intensive

1

reading and context reconstruction. We found the method

beneficial and practicable for intermediate and advanced level

students provided that it be introduced gradually.

Key words: small language corpus, corpus-based exercises,

vocabulary, university students, journal

Introduction

Usefulness of corpus data for language teaching has long been

recognised (Willis, 1993; Tribble and Jones, 1990;

Krishnamurthy, 2001) and corpus informed language teaching

materials are now taken for granted. A modern course book, for

example, is entirely corpus-informed (McCarthy, 2004) and all

major publishers now provide corpus-based dictionaries

(O'Keeffe, A. et al., 2007: 17). Experimenting with direct

application of corpus material and corpus methods in language

classrooms is only relatively a recent phenomenon. Corpora

and concordancing were introduced in the language-learning

environment in 1969 (McEnery and Wilson, 1997: 12) but it

was Tim Johns’ (1986) work and his idea of Data driven

learning in the 1980s that spawned interest and further

empirical research (Tribble and Jones, 1990; Stevens, 1995;

Cobb, 1997). The tool, however, is not yet widely used in the

language classrooms and more empirical research is needed to

help disseminate the idea and encourage the use of corpus-

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driven activities. More importantly, the research should

indicate new ways, and new language items that can be

presented in this way to facilitate the application of corpus-

driven activities in the classroom. This is exactly the aim of this

paper: to set examples of possible tasks that can be designed

using a small corpus and to analyse how students react to them,

both in terms of their ability to solve the set problems and

opinions/attitudes towards the given type of exercise. In doing

so we hope to bring corpora directly into the classroom to help

teach, explain, or practice particular language items.

Vocabulary teaching and corpora

In order to be able to speak a language well it is essential to

have a wide range of vocabulary. This fact is now taken for

granted by both teachers and learners, but it has not always

been that way. Not so long ago it was grammar that was given

priority and words were seen as mere gap fillers of

predetermined syntactic language structures. It was the careful

study of language corpora that brought evidence of a vague and

almost non-existent borderline between grammar and lexis

(Sinclair, 1991). Carefully sorted corpus concordance lines

highlighted patterns that depend on particular lexical items

rather than syntactic structures and thus revealed that each

lexical item has a little “grammar” of its own. Today, we

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approach vocabulary teaching with this revolutionary

development in our minds. Furthermore, regular language

classes cannot cover the huge number of vocabulary items that

students need to learn. Students need to be enabled to do a lot

of autonomous learning and modern language instructors need

to teach them both how to learn vocabulary as well as what to

learn. Presenting corpus data in a variety of tasks can raise

students’ awareness of what there is to learn and how to do it.

Methodology

Our sample consists of 51 undergraduate university students of

economics and tourism who have been learning English

between 8 and 12 years. To make the sample more

representative of the student population in non-philological

studies it comprises students from three different

universities/faculties.

The test

The students were given a test that consisted of three different

exercises based on and derived from a small corpus. The corpus

compiled and used in this study consists of 450 000 tokens and

is therefore classified as a small corpus. It combines one

register and one genre because it includes only the texts from

the area of tourism, or more specifically of the tour guides of

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the Mediterranean countries. It was originally compiled as a

source of corpus-derived exercises in a project carried out with

students of tourism (Marinov, 2011) but is now used for

teaching purposes to address particular language issues when

necessary.

Each exercise aims at a particular language problem that we

believed students at this level of language learning should be

able to cope with and understand but not without some

difficulty. We concentrated on teaching vocabulary as it is

believed that lexical information is much easier for learners to

notice and study (Gaskell and Cobb, 2004). Wanting to include

the elements of "student research" and knowing that students

find coping with the whole range of lines so discouraging that

they prefer and need guidance (Marinov, 2011), we provided

the material in the form of a shortened concordance. Our

research included three different exercises as described below.

Task 1 – the verb “run”

This task consists of an 83-line-long concordance of the verb

“run.” Concordance is a screen display or printout of a chosen

word or phrase in its different contexts, with that word or

phrase arranged down the centre of the display along with the

text that comes before and after it (McCarthy, 2004). The task

concentrates on meanings. “Run” is a word all our students are

familiar with but only with a narrow range of its meanings. The

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aim of this exercise is, therefore, to extend this range and

possibly raise the students’ awareness that many other highly

frequent words have additional meanings to be learnt.

In the “Mediterranean Europe” corpus there are as many as 562

tokens of “run” so the concordance had to be shortened. In

order not to lose authenticity of the corpus data by editing it

(Flowerdew, 1996), we used the WordSmith tool feature to

shorten the concordance automatically and this resulted in 83

lines. The concordance was then right-sorted, i.e. arranged

alphabetically to the right of the node word.

Observing the students' responses we wanted to find out the

following:

I how many and which of the present meanings the

students managed to identify

II which of the meanings were more easily identifiable

Task 2

The students were required to complete 14 gapped sentences

with one of the two phrasal verbs: make for or make up for, and

organize the information in their personal vocabulary files by

defining the meaning and providing an example sentence for

each phrasal verb. Finally, the students were asked to comment

on the task so that we could determine these:

I The overall accuracy (score) expressed in percentages.

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II Which of the phrasal verbs was understood better and

used more correctly.

III Whether there is a connection between the score

achieved and the students' perception of task difficulty.

Task 3

In Task 3 students were asked to study the 16 examples and

deduct if there was any difference in usage between made from

and made of. They were then, same as in Task 1, asked to make a

vocabulary file entry for each of the collocations. In the journal

entry, they had to note their impressions and possible difficulties

in solving the task.

Journal

Along with the corpus data the students were asked to keep a

journal in which they noted their opinions, feelings, and

difficulties encountered while doing each of the assigned tasks.

The journal consisted of generic questions and questions related to

specific tasks. Students were also asked to explain the path they

were taking while trying to solve the tasks.

Analysis

Journal questions 1 and 2

The introductory generic questions were as follows: “Have you

already encountered this method of discovering meanings and

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studying new vocabulary and its usage?” and

"Do you use search engines? Why? and When?"

As regards the familiarity with similar tasks, the majority of

students (N = 39) responded negatively. When asked whether,

why, and when they used internet search engines most students

(44) answered affirmatively, but indicated different level of

frequency. Judging by the answers obtained, we can conclude that

the majority interpreted search engines as Internet, Google

translator or computers in general. Several students mentioned

that they used search engines to verify expressions they cannot

find in dictionaries. Three students mentioned wanting to see the

context in which a particular phrase or expression is used. Finally,

only one student mentioned looking for a similar authentic

document in the target language. It is obvious that students should

be given some direct, explicit instructions about the differences

between on-line dictionaries and search engines, and should be

taught how to use internet search engines to advance their

language learning.

Task analysis

Task 1 – meanings of “run”

The 83-line-long concordance included ten different

meanings/usages of “run”. Their frequency was established and is

presented in the second column of Table 1.

Meaning frequency identified

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correctly

1 manage, operate, organize 42 94%

2 transport, drive, ride 25 96%

3 cost 3 39%

4 last 1 49%

5 stretch 6 53%

6 expire 1 61%

7 dilapidated 1 29.5%

8 go berserk 1 4%

9 read 1 9.8%

10 to include everything within

a group or type

1 5.8%

Table 1: Meanings/usages of the verb ”run“ in the 83-line-long concordance

from the corpus „Mediterranean Europe“

The sample as a whole managed to identify all ten meanings of

the verb but with varying success. The most easily identifiable

senses were 1 and 2, which were also the two most frequent

senses in the concordance. The rate of noticing is obviously

related but not directly to the frequency of occurrence as can be

seen from the example of the next most frequently noticed

sense (expire) which appears only once in the concordance. In

other words, there is no clear and measurable connection

between frequency of occurrence and the rate of recognition of

a particular sense. The rate of recognition can be influenced by

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a number of factors such as: an existent passive/active

knowledge of the word/sense, the immediate context, language

proficiency, seriousness with which a student has tackled the

task (motivation, interest, patience) which in itself could be a

topic of another, separate research.

Students have also ”invented“ some meanings of their own.

They treated different uses of the same sense as separate

senses. Most frequently they interpreted the passive usage of

”run“ as in “well-run“ or ”run by“ as separate senses (24%).

Students' comments allowed us to establish how much they

liked the exercise, what were the major difficulties encountered

and strategies used in finding the solutions. Content analysis of

students' responses is presented in Table 2.

comment/idea frequency

General impressions

1 easy/initial problems quickly resolved 13

2 interesting/useful 10

3 interesting but ... confusing/difficult/long 5

Major difficulties encountered

4 difficult to distinguish between the meanings 9

5 lacking or difficult context 7

6 understand the meaning but cannot explain 5

7 time consuming 6

Strategies used

10

8 used Internet/dictionaries to find out 15

9 re-reading 7

10 careful analysis and concentration (which is good

and helps acquisition)

2

Table 2: Students' opinions/comments on Task 1: different senses of the verb

”run“

Quoted below are two students' exact words which we selected

as extreme examples of the two ends of a spectrum of opinions.

Task 2 – phrasal verbs “make for” and “make up for”

The compounded score for all students revealed a satisfactory

overall accuracy with 80% of all sentences completed correctly.

More than 50% of students made fewer than 2 mistakes. At the

other end of the spectrum, there were 9.8% students with 7 or

fewer correct answers.

Altogether, the students had more difficulty understanding

make for than make up for.

The connection between the score and perception of task

difficulty could only be examined for the 19 students who made

comments about the difficulty. The score and the perceived task

difficulty corresponded in 9 cases only. By contrast, 4 students

with high scores found the task difficult and expressed

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uncertainty about their answers and 6 students with very low

scores maintained the task was easy. To conclude, the correct

and incorrect perception of task difficulty and one's

achievement appeared to be equally widespread, which we

found surprising as one would expect a higher level of self-

awareness among university students.

Task 3 – difference between made of and made from

Quality

of

answers

No. of

studentsStrategies applied

Perceived level

of difficulty

0 14 No effort made - no

difference noticed An easy task

1 14 Strategies applied led to

mistaken conclusionsAn easy task

2 10 Difference briefly explained

(from dictionary)An easy task

3 13

Correct definitions provided

with good examples of

usage and explanation of

one’s analytical approach /

the logic applied

A difficult task

Students’ answers were evaluated on a scale from 0 to 3: 0 - no

answer or completely wrong,

1- fair, 2 - good, and 3 - very good. The overview of their answers

and journal comments is presented in the Table 3.

Table 3: Students' answers to Task 3: deducting the difference in meaning

between made of and made from

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The quality of students’ answers was inversely proportionate to

the perceived level of task difficulty: the students who invested

no or little effort found the task easy, whereas the students who

chose to ponder the sentences and work out the meaning for

themselves found the task difficult but interesting and rewarding.

Clearly, this kind of task is best suited for highly-motivated,

curious, and committed students.

Journal questions 4 and 5

Having completed three different corpus-based exercises the

students were required to outline what they saw as the

particular benefits of this approach to language learning and

suggest potential users. The analysis of students’ answers

regarding the advantages of corpus-based exercises revealed

the following:

1. Praise to the inductive approach and learner autonomy.

A significant number of students (19) appreciated the inductive

approach and learner empowerment. They found that corpus-

based exercises developed skills important for increasing the

quality of learning and understanding through parallel

observation of different examples of usage, practical

application of knowledge, autonomy in establishing rules,

creation of meaning from context and discovering relations

between language phenomena.

2. Strong emphasis on the importance of context.

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Many students (18) emphasised the importance of context,

especially as it prevents literal translation, underpins deduction

of meaning and enhances long-term memory.

3. Generally positive remarks about the method.

A significant number of students thought that corpus-based

approach enhanced vocabulary learning (12) and was more

interesting than traditional ways of learning (9). A smaller

group appreciated the intense practice, focus on details (4), the

abundance of examples (3) and positive effects of the

interaction between existing and newly acquired knowledge

(3).

Finally, as regards the potential beneficiaries of this approach,

students' responses fall into several distinct groups.

1. Emphasis on learners’ desire to learn.

Answers in this group (21) revolve around the idea of the desire

to learn as a prerequisite for employing this method. Seventeen

students would recommend this approach to persons willing to

invest effort and actively engage in building their vocabulary,

either for study or for work, and the remaining four would

recommend it to those whose English is weak but who wished

to learn more.

2. Emphasis on level of English

22 comments (44%) mention or focus on prospective learners'

level of English. Most students who fall into this group believe

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this approach suits advanced learners (15), which qualification

can include high school students as well. Three respondents

would recommend it to individuals who are too self-confident

about their level of English. Three students believe even the

beginners in primary education would benefit from this method

and one thinks that both advanced learners and beginners

would find it beneficial. Finally, three students think the

approach would be useful for people with specific vocabulary

problems.

3. Emphasis on learners' professional or academic needs

This group recommends the method to individuals who are

interested in the English language itself, who focus on details,

i.e. to language students (3) or to Croatian politicians because

they “constantly embarrass us with their horrible English” (2).

4. Negative attitude

There are three students who would not recommend this

approach to anyone.

Conclusion

Using authentic corpus material is a rather innovative and

insufficiently explored teaching/learning method. In this

research three corpus-based tasks were given to university

students of business and tourism and their responses were

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analyzed with respect to both accuracy/new learning, as well as

to their comments about this teaching/learning approach.

All three exercises presented a challenge to most students and

made them develop own strategies for finding solutions and

answers. In line with previous empirical studies our research

has shown that certain learners appreciate the benefits of corpus

consultation while others find it too time consuming or

demanding (Chambers & O’Sullivan, 2004; Chambers, 2005).

Each of the three exercises caused different problems but they

also presented some common ground such as the lack of

context, difficult context, or the need to invest more time and

concentration on intensive reading. For some students the

strategy of intensive and concentrated reading made up for the

lacking context that they thus managed to construct. Intensive

reading is a skill that is rarely practiced in regular language

courses. Therefore, the best practice would be to introduce

corpus and intensive reading gradually, as a long-term process

and an integral part of the overall language-learning process

(Kennedy and Miceli, 2001). The problem of non-existent

context can also be tackled by encouraging students to use

various reference materials and examine longer stretches of

source texts.

A clear focus on independent acquiring of new knowledge has

also been recognised, combining more familiar with less

familiar. The process of language recycling, which helps

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shifting passive into the active usage, is thus also initiated. The

depth and long-term knowledge retention is recognized as the

main advantage of this approach. Apart from recognising the

value of learning vocabulary through several contextual

encounters (Cobb, 1997) certain students have also found the

tasks to be challenging and therefore more motivating than

traditional types of exercises. The complexity of the task

increased motivation for higher (upper-intermediate or

advanced) level language learners, while it decreased for those

at lower levels.

Finally, appreciation of skills developed in the course of doing

the exercises (parallel observation, practical application of

knowledge, establishing rules, drawing conclusions, deduction

of meaning from context, finding relations between language

phenomena) clearly emphasise the importance of procedural

knowledge that is enhanced by this approach.

Based on the obtained data and students’ journal responses, we

can conclude that the method is beneficial and practicable for

intermediate and advance level students but the corpus data

should be edited in order to suit the particular students’ needs,

abilities and language proficiency. Some challenge should be

provided, to provoke interest and the feeling of success, but the

task should not be too long or difficult, as not to discourage the

students. The list of obtained student opinions about corpus-

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driven learning can be used as a solid starting point for future

research.

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