EFL Teacher’s Reflections towards the Use of Computerized Corpora As a Teaching Tool in Their Classrooms

Abstract

The relation between corpus based applications and language teaching in EFL context is far more obvious today, due to the potential of computerized corpus to offer new insights for the language teaching opportunities, which calls for efficient and technology literate language teachers. Although corpus and corpus tools attract a great deal of attention in research community, the use of corpora in EFL classrooms remains limited for various reasons. Part of the reason behind this picture may be due to unpopularity of corpus and corpus tools among the language teachers. Thus, the aim of this case study is to discuss ways of familiarizing language teachers with the potential benefits of the corpus tools and of increasing their perceptions towards it, since this will be an essential step towards the integration of these tools into the classroom environment. To this end, a case study with six (6) language teachers in an EFL context was carried out. Purposive sampling was used in the selection of the samples. Data on the perceptions expressed by the language teachers were collected through open ended interviews. The results suggest that almost all six teachers favored the language exploration process through a range of concordance searches on structural and lexical aspects of language but added that the potential of corpus to offer wide range of grammatical structures and lexical patterns at one time may be difficult to grasp for themselves as well as for their students in the classroom.

Keywords

• Corpora, Perception, Teacher training

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Abstract

Etkin ve teknoloji okuryazarlığı iyi olan yabancı dil öğretmenlerinin varlığını gerekli kılan bilgisayarlı derlem uygulamaları sayesinde, yabancı dil öğretiminin önünde yeni ufuklar açılmış ve derlem tabanlı uygulamalar ile dil öğretimi arasındaki ilişkiyi günümüzde çok daha belirgin şekilde ortaya çıkarmıştır. Derlem ve derlem araçları araştırmacılar arasında bilinmesine ve ilgi çekmesine rağmen çeşitli sebeplerden dolayı dil öğretiminde hak ettiği ilgiyi henüz görememiştir. Bu durumun sebeplerinden bir tanesi derlem ve derlem araçlarının yabancı dil öğretmenleri arasında popular olmaması olabilir. Çalışmanın amaçlarından birincisi, derlem ve araçlarının potansiyel faydalarını yabancı dil öğretmenlerinin daha fazla tanımasını sağlamak ve onların farkındalık seviyelerini artırmaktır. Bu durum derlem ve araçlarının dil sınıflarına entegrasyonu için gerekli bir aşamadır. Bu örnek olay incelemesi altı İngilizce öğretmeni ile gerçekleştirilmiştir. Deneklerin seçiminde amaçlı örnekleme modeli kullanılmış ve dil öğretmenlerinin konu hakkındaki algıları açık uçlu mülakat ile belirlenmiştir. Tüm denekler İngilizcenin yapısal ve terimsel yönleri üzerine derlem dizinlerinde yaptıkları yeni keşiflerden çok memnun kalmışlardır. Derlemin kullanıcılarına potansiyel olarak sağladığı dilbilgisi ve kelime yapıları hakkındaki alanın anlaşılmasının kendileri ve öğrencileri açısından zaman alabileceği ifade edilmiştir

Keywords

• Derlem, Algı, Öğretmen yetiştirilmesi

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