Chapter 1 What are corpora and why might they be useful for language learning classrooms?
1. Introduction 3
2. What is a corpus? 3
3. What kinds of corpora are there? 4
4. What corpora might be available for teachers and researchers to access? 19
5. Why might a corpus be useful for language teaching and what might be some of the challenges? 21
6. Summary 22
7. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 23
8. References 23
Chapter 2 Connecting corpora and single words
1. Introduction 31
2. Corpora and word frequency in English 31
3. Measuring the vocabulary load of a spoken text 46
4. Vocabulary load and written texts 50
5. Summary 52
6. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 52
7. References 53
Chapter 3 Connecting corpora and multi-word units
1. Introduction 59
2. What are multi-word units? 59
3. Classifying multi-word units 62
4. Some examples of multi-word unit lists of general English 69
5. Regional variations in multi-word units 73
6. Using corpora to identify multi-word units in a text 73
7. The Phrasal Expressions List (PHRASE List)(Martinez & Schmitt, 2012) 76
8. Summary 79
9. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 80
10. References 80
Chapter 4 Connecting corpora and English for Academic Purposes
1. Introduction on 87
2. What is English for Academic Purposes and why is it important? 87
3. English for General Academic Purposes 88
4. Using corpora to examine vocabulary in the sciences 102
5. Corpus-based multi-word unit lists for EAP 108
6. Idioms in academic texts 115
7. Summary 115
8. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 116
9. References 116
Chapter 5 Connecting corpora and English for Specific Purposes
1. Introduction 123
2. What is special about vocabulary in English for Specific Purposes? 123
3. Frequency in vocabulary in ESP 126
4. How can corpora help in teaching and learning technical or specialised vocabulary in ESP? 131
5. Multi-word units in ESP 140
6. Summary 143
7. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 143
8. References 143
Chapter 6 Taking corpora into classrooms
1. Introduction 151
2. The four strands (Nation, 2007) and planning using word lists 152
3. Using corpora in the classroom for strategy training 163
4. Using corpora in the classroom for testing 168
5. Using corpora for teaching 173
6. Summary 178
7. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 179
8. References 179
Chapter 7 Designing and evaluating corpus-based research for the classroom and carrying out your own study
1. Introduction 187
2. What methodological decisions and principles might need to be made when you consider designing or using a corpus? 187
3. Evaluating a word list made from a corpus 197
4. Evaluating corpus-based research 201
5. Carrying out your own corpus-based study 203
6. Summary 204
7. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 204
8. References 205
Chapter 8 Websites, corpora, tests and suggestions for further reading and conclusion
1. Introduction 211
2. Suggestions for useful websites and tools for carrying out corpus analysis 211
3. Some corpora that are available online 212
4. Some tests developed from corpora for general English 213
5. Suggestions for further reading 214
6. Some suggestions for journals on corpus-based research and classroom teaching 217
7. Conclusion 218
8. What could teachers do after reading this chapter? 219
9. References 219
Appendices 221
Answer keys 233
Glossary 241