Teacher Training Courses: Focussing on Language

Using Corpora in Language Teaching

This 30 hour course teaches the use of Sketch Engine, the most comprehensive corpus software in the world. It is an online search engine with hundreds of corpora in dozens of languages. A very wide range of grammar, vocabulary and discourse features can be explored by teachers and students. 

Learning how to use corpora in language teaching is an exciting challenge and opens the door to a wide range of language phenomena which are very valuable to language learning and teaching. People have been using so-called Data Driven Learning since the 1980s and conferences, books, journals and online groups are proliferating. 
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Because language is at the core of language teaching, the course is intended for teachers:
  • in secondary schools 
  • in universities 
  • in independent language schools
  • for private teachers. 

It should also be of interest to people who, 
  • write material for teaching and testing
  • teach examination courses such as IELTS and TOEFL
  • train university teachers in EMI courses
  • train CELTA and DELTA courses.
The course teaches not only the use of Sketch Engine, but features of language that can be explored via corpora as well as aspects of guided discovery, learner autonomy and other language learning processes. These three layers are interwoven throughout the course.

Some of the skills that you will acquire on the course are 
  • finding authentic illustrative sentences for teaching and testing
  • making your own corpus of specific topics from the web such as the environment, a rock band, about Australia
  • making your own corpus from your own documents such as texts from a textbook, texts written by your students
  • creating discovery activities for students
  • checking the usage of words, phrases and structure when correcting written work.
  • comparing language features in different genres and registers
  • asking language questions

Learning what questions to ask and how to ask them is an important theme running through this course. Teachers will learn how to learn and teach aspects of language related to things such as:
  • vocabulary patterns, collocations, idioms, phrasal verbs, prepositions, colloquial and formal registers, grammar structures, tense and aspect, punctuation.
For examples of specific language questions, see here.

In the process of working so closely with language, you will be developing your language skills: your thinking about the Language bit of language teaching can be expected to evolve. Being equipped with such knowledge and skills permits teachers and students to become more independent learners. This is a skill for life.

Sketch Engine also developed a much simpler version of its interface for language learners called  SKELL. Students and teachers like using SKELL on the fly in class. During this course, we also explore its potential. 

Some general introductory information is available on the Teacher Training Course page. Full details about enrolment and practical matters  can be found on the CA Institute page.