Data collection and Materials Development

Welcome
To
The Presentation
of

A bank or collection of authentic
texts collected in order to find
out how language is actually
used. Example: a corpus of
newspaper English, a corpus of
legal documents etc.

Introduction:
• There has been occurred a revolutionary changes during
the last 20 years in the way of language study.
• By handling large amounts of data with the help of
computer it is now possible to build language corpora and
it allows researchers to analyze how language is being
used in present time and how was it in the past.
• To make corpora there has to compile many books and
there was no scope of start afresh and which were not
right or nearly right.
• At present computers have developed in such a way that
there is no longer any restriction on the size of a corpus
and there is no complicacy of making a new one.

Frequency information:
• “frequency information” means the recurrence of the information or
the data.
• In data collection it has much importance because corpus is built by
using the more used or frequent words. It is easy to discover which is
the most frequent among words which are synonyms, for examples,
‘start’, ‘begin’ and ‘commence’.
•In the whole Bank of English, ‘start’ is about 10% more frequent than
‘begin’ and ‘commence’ is very infrequent. Similar variants also can be
showed in ‘judgment’ and ‘inquire’.
• Frequency information allows teachers and learners to know and to
use actively. It is also very much important to know which words are
infrequent.
• “he gave her a smile” semantically means nearly the same as “he
smiled at her.” These types of sentences are many in English and
learners are suggested to use the right one based on situations.

Contexts and co-texts:
• The situational and linguistic environments-they
are commonly used in. It is another reason for
analyzing a large amount of data.
• Here is a verb ‘break out’ which is seen to be
used in such things as ‘wars’, ‘fights’, ‘strikes’, and
‘fire’ that break out. Using these verbs with
different nouns can create misunderstanding.

Grammar:
• The central element of language teaching. Indeed most
syllabuses are still grammar-based, whether overtly or
covertly.
• But at present it has been risen some questions about the
use of grammar-
1. Is the grammar that is taught really the grammar of the
language?
2. Are the course books as important in real life as they in
the classroom?
3. Are the uses of tenses are clear-cut?
There are also the questions of teaching learners. So, we
should have to think about it before teaching in the
classroom.

Concordance
A list of authentic utterances each containing the
same focused word or phrase.
•Problem Arises From the first look on
concordance-
(1) each of the lines is discrete
(2) often on completely different subject
(3) Most of the lines do not show even whole sentences.
•Solution to that problem:
Guessing or understanding what the line is about. We just need to
have a rough idea; not required to understand the topic.

Up a tiny vacant table at the open window of pierre’s café
ordered himself an ice-cream and Irish Coffee, and
n the earlier erroneous FBI reports. Although the judge
had ordered all the televisions removed from the juror’s
motel room
he landlord had found out that she had deceived him and
had ordered her to vacate her apartment. She had
promised this
ational, an engine overheated. As a precaution, the
captain ordered it shot down. None of the aircraft’s
passengers wer

Collocation and Phraseology
Collocation refers to the words which are
frequently used together.

Phraseology refers to the particular way in which
words and phrases are arranged when saying or
writing something.
A reading of Concordance lines for ‘take’ shows that
phraseology (what’s your take on. . .) is equally
important as the part of structural system as the
preposition ‘on’.

Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that focuses on
what is explicitly stated and on how we interpret
utterances in situational contexts.
According to Thomas (1995), Pragmatics considers-
•The negotiation of meaning between speakers and
listeners
•The context of the utterance
•The meaning potential of utterance

The word “sorry” is used in the following
sentences to show apology in different
ways-
•I am sorry but you will have to leave.
(presence not welcomed)
•I am sorry, the table is reserved. (Already
Reserved)
•Mr. Ahmed: Go and get me the papers,
Matthew.
Matthew: I’m sorry, are you talking to me?
(Checking whether it was asked to him)
•I am sorry to hear about your loss.
(showing sympathy)

•Corpus analysis has shown us that there are
many common features of native speaker use
which non-native speakers do not typically pay
attention to.
•Teachers give students many strategies for
coping, some of which could be developed
through the use of concordances.
•By studying concordance lines, students will
become more aware of language, and will know
how particular words are used by native speakers.
And, in doing so, they will develop analytical skills.

Concordances in the classroom without a
computer: assembling and exploiting
concordances of common words.
•Introduction
Concordances –alphabetical list of the words in a book.
•Preparation for concordancing by hand
There are three essentials which can be used for
concordancing by hand. They are-
( a)text themselves,
(b)frequency information,
(c)a good dictionary
•Assembling and investigating concordances
Tomlinson used five sessions where hand concordancing is
used.

v Sample session 1: a focus on as for ESP learners:
We can notice in the following sentences---
Maintenance costs are decreased
proportionately as productivity rises(as indicates
time)
Complex activity which includes such actions as the
search for food(as indicates example)
Food intake and energy requirement suggests that
as with energy, intake should vary(meaning similar
to)
Appears to be relatively unimportant in grazing as
animals will graze in the dark and(expressing a
reason)

v Sample session 2:common words in spontaneous
spoken narrative
There is a lot of words which are not directly telling
the story but relates to the discourse itself. These
words may be at, had, I, in, of, one ,so, that/that’s
,his, what/what’s. Many useful common lexical
phrases were identified and practiced -in the case of
this one, I have to make it clear, just a bit less
than…….,phrases with of like and all the rest of it
.Focusing on in; i.e. in an attempt to………The
session 1 and 2 are for elementary and fresh
beginners.

v Sample session 3:real beginners-a focus on that
In this session with real beginners ,learners first
completed a task listing English words that are
international(e.g. football, hotel, disco). These included-
Taxi? Oh yes, that’s a good one.
Picnic. What about that?
Oh yes, that’s a good one.
How about that?
Ah, we’ve done that one!
We’ve got that, sorry.
Got that!
That’s a good one, yes!
Olympics? That’s Greek!

The phrases with that are all common phrases and useful
for classroom communication. Learners were asked to
classify them; for example phrases starting with that, and
phrases ending with that or that one. Some learners
preferred to group the ones with similar words or patterns
together, as shown here.
How about that? We’ve done that one. Oh yes, that’s a good one.
What about that? We’ve got that that’s a good one, yes

v Sample session 4: remedial beginners –a focus on the
preposition in
Which phrases with in refer to place and which to time? Are there
any phrases left over? Note that this three way classification
activity(place, time, and other)will work with any preposition.
The examples found in the current texts included:
Biltmore House in Asheville, USA
built in 1890
the most expensive house in the world
in 1922
a cottage in North Wales
built in the 19th century
the smallest house in Great Britain
In this first set of examples, all the uses of in were either place or
time. Besides there are some fixed phrases like in fact .It is also
interesting for learners to note the examples of the adverbial use of
in like Will you join in? Hand your books in where in ends a
sentence(this is rare in most other languages )

v Sample session 5: revision activities based on course materials:
intermediate learners
Here are two ways of exploiting the course materials.
a)select the same number of common words and divide them up
amongst the class giving one word to each student, or two words to
each pair of students .
Alternatively, the students write the concordance lines with a gap
instead of the central word , for the class to guess the missing word.
I suddenly thought of it ---eating an animal
Easier to imagine them ---whole animals
That’s because I see rabbits ---pets
(b) In the same way, students can prepare their own test items.
Groups of students select a set of three or four cloze items to donate
to a ‘test item bank’ kept by the teachers, who can select from the
items to assemble a class test. This gives learners a sense of
responsibility as well as motivation to revise and reread ,thereby
gaining a deeper experience of language.

Enhancing the process
Selecting words for concordaning
once you become familiar with your frequency list you will find it
easier to scan a text and pick out suitable words.
If you are teaching ESP, try to find frequency list for your specialist
area.
Try to cover as many of the frequent words as you can; some words
can be focused on several times , with different types of texts.
-Keep a record of words covered, together with the meanings and
uses of those words.
Varying the focus and process
We can vary
the number of words we focus in a session .
the number of text we investigate each time .
the type of text-spoken, written or both .
the type of words focused on each time.

Balancing the pedagogic corpus
The pedagogic corpus consist of the texts and
recordings from the class course book, plus
any supplementary materials used by the class
as a whole.
In other words, text and transcripts familiar with
the students.
Individual learners should be encouraged to read
more widely on their own.
A pedagogic corpus is inevitably quite small and
needs to be selected in a principled manner.

Telling tails: grammar, the spoken language and
materials development
We have access to data which tells us
how the target language is typically
written and spoken and we know for a
fact that language use is variable
depends on the context in which it is
being used

Authentic vs. Scripted dialogues:
When naturally-occurring language is compared with language
constructed for the purposes of language teaching, marked differences
can be observed.
Text 1: Scripted text from a text book:
(Making a Doctor’s appointment)
(telephone rings)
Patient: could I make an appointment to see the doctor please?
Receptionist: Certainly, who do you usually see?
Patient: Dr. Cullen.
Receptionist: I’m sorry but Dr. Cullen has got patients all day. Would Dr.
Maley do?
Patient: Sure.
Receptionist: Ok then. When would you like to come?
Patient: Could I come at four o’clock?
Receptionist: Four o’clock? Fine, could I have your name please?
(Nunan and
Lockwood 1991

Text 2: Authentic text:
(Confirming an Appointment with the Doctor)
Receptionist: Doctor’s rooms, can you hold the line for a moment?
Patient: Yes.
Receptionist: Thanks.
(pause)
Receptionist: Hello.
Patient: Hello.
Receptionist: Sorry to keep you waiting.
Patient: That’s all right um I’m just calling to confirm an appointment with Dr. X for the
first of October.
Receptionist: Oh….
Patient: Because it was so far in advance I was told to.
Receptionist: I see what you mean, to see if she’s going to be in that day.
Patient: That’s right.
Receptionist: Oh we may not know yet.
Patient: Oh I see.
Receptionist: First of October….Edith….yes.
Patient: Yes.
Receptionist: There she is Ok you made one. What’s your name?
Patient: At nine fift….
Receptionist: Got it got it.
(Burns, Joyce and Gollin 1996)

Observation: In this text we find more
‘unpredicted’ sequences such as the opening
exchange in which the patient is asked to hold
the line and content-less words (oh).
The scripted text is easier to comprehend but
is unlikely to be reproduced in actual context
of use:
The unscripted text is real English but more
difficult to comprehend and to produce and
therefore likely to be considered less
appropriate pedagogically

Tails: Tails are an important feature of a
listener-sensitive, affective grammar and
occur frequently in informal contexts of
language use. Tails allow speakers to
express attitudes, to add emphasis, to
evaluate and to provide repetition for
listeners. All the tails are one kind of
emphatic recapitulation, refer to such
features as tags but do not offer detailed
treatment.

Observations about tails:
1. a noun (or pronoun) and a verb which extend a
pronoun (or noun) or demonstrative which has
occurred earlier in the clause. The noun can either
follow or precede the verb (e.g. he was very
helpful, Max was; He was very helpful, was Max)
2. When a pronoun comes first in a clause and the
tail is formed with a noun then the noun normally
makes the comment stronger (e.g. He was a great
leader, Gandhi was)
3. The noun can also be used as a tail on its own
(e.g. he was very helpful, Max)

5. Tails can occur with tag questions and can be placed
either before or after the tag (e.g. she’s a good player,
Hiroko is, isn’t she? It’s not easy to eat, is it, Spaghetti?)
6. When the tail repeats a verb which is not a verb ‘to be’
or an auxiliary/modal verb then a do verb is used (e.g. she
sings very well, she does; They complain all the time,
they do)
7. Tails always agree with the phrase to which they refer
(e.g. It’s not a good wine, that isn’t; she’ll never pass the
exam, won’t Toni)
Negatives with ‘hardly’, ‘scarcely’ etc. keep a negative tail
(e.g. He scarcely speaks, he doesn’t)

1. What is Language awareness?
Language awareness refers to an explicit knowledge
about language, and conscious perception or sensibility
in language learning, language teaching and language
use.
2. What is Consciousness-raising?
Consciousness-raising, also known as awareness-raising,
is part of the process a learner can go through
with new language.

1 Characteristics of Language awareness
2. III in place of PPP
3. Importance of Heads and Tails
Examples of Heads:
a. The women, they all shouted.
b. b. That chap over there, he said it was OK.
Examples of Tails :
a. He’s a real problem is Jeff.
b. b. It’s too hot for me, Singapore.

Rules, Choices and the Hegemony
of the Native speaker
1.Conscious about Grammatical rules
2.Use of correct form of verbs
3.Evaluation of speaking through a
standard grammar.
4.Maintaining Heads and Tails in speaking

Overall Conclusion
The basic messages which come across from the three
chapters are:
1. Many L2 learners have been disadvantaged because of using
idealized data and the language. There is no scope of using very recent
data and ideas. Recently published books have no access to be used in
the evaluation process, what should be changed. Learners need to
start learning what is simple and to the right things.
2. All three chapters argue for the need of data from a corpus of
authentic language use. Students should be encouraged to write their
own grammar of the target language. And, their works can be
monitored by the teacher.
3. It focuses on the analysis of authentic language data that learners
should give attention to investigate the meaning for the sake of
communication in the target language. And, the teacher should make
suitable environments or should arrange meaningful materials for
better outcome.

Data collection and Materials Development

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