Elena Volodina

Corpora in Language Classroom: Reusing Stockholm Umeå Corpus in a Vocabulary Exercise Generator Elena Volodina

Authentic examples as teaching material are not easy to obtain. Corpora are able to solve this problem, as has been witnessed before. Most experiments with corpora in language classroom describe concordances. However, there are numerous other ways of bringing corpora into language education, as shown in this research. A selective learner-oriented exercise generator has been implemented on the basis of Stockholm Umeå Corpus (SUC). SUC texts have been tested for readability and levels were assigned. This generator assists in automatic selection of authentic examples of appropriate learner levels as well as in construction of wordbank-, multiple choice items and c-tests for a specified proficiency level, frequency band and word class. In Vocabulary Size Test potential words are generated on the basis of existing morphemes and SUC-based frequency lists. Interesting practical and theoretical questions connected with reusage of corpora in an exercise generator are described in this book. The research might inspire computational linguists, language teachers and everyone interested in Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Corpus Linguistics to test similar techniques in their practices.