Incorporation of Corpus and

Collocation in Language

Classrooms.

Professor: Milenia Reyes

Corpus

Collocation

Corpus

A collection of texts, written or spoken,

usually stored in a computer

database.

◦ Newspaper

◦ Books

◦ Magazines

◦ Phone calls

◦ Ordinary conversations

◦ TV shows

Purpose

The most frequent words and phrases

in English.

Tense people use the most.

Differences in speaking and writing.

Contexts of use: Informal and

formal situations.

Different words native speakers use in

conversations.

Collocations

How are you?

I’m fine, Thank you.

Good thanks

awesome Great

Not, bad Pretty good

I’m Ok I’m sad today

Expressions

Really?

Well

I mean

You know

Uh-huh

Oh

Like

Anyway

You did?

I’m not sure

Stuff like that

And that sort of

stuff

You see

McCarthy, Michael. (Touchstone 2)

How does it look like?

Jill: Where do want to go for dinner?

Jose: I don’t know. Why don’t we go to

the pizza place on the corner?

Jill: Pizza again! I don’t like their

pizza. It’s too spicy.

Jose: You are right. It’s spicier than

the pizza at Pizza House.

Jill: Well, I still want to go out tonight.

How about the new Japanese

restaurant downtown?

Jose: Ok! Lest go!

Stempleski, Susan (World Link, book 2)

How does it look like?Eve: Ooh, it’s cold tonight.

Chris: Yeah, it is. But actually, I kind of

like cold weather.

Eve: You do? Really? …Boy, there

are a lot of people out here tonight.

Chris: Yeah, it gets pretty crowded on

weekends.

Eve: Do you come here a lot?

Chris: Yeah, I do, actually.

Eve: So are you a big hip-hop fan?

Chris: Yeah, I am. Are you?

Eve: Actually, no, but my brother’s in

the band tonight.

Chris: Oh, really? Cool.... By the

way, my name’s Chris.

Eve: Nice to meet you. I’m Eve.

McCarthy, Michael. (Touchstone 2)

Corpus for ESP

It is probably one of the most obvious

and pointed applications of Corpus

Linguistics.

◦ Academic purposes

◦ Nurses and health care

◦ Air traffic controllers

What is not a Corpus?

An archive is not a corpus.

A collection of citations is not a

corpus.

A text is not a corpus.

Collocations

A collocation is a pair or group of

words that are often used together.

(Michael McCarthy)

Learning Collocations

It is good to learn collocations

because they will help you to speak

and write English in a more natural

and accurate way.

It is accepted that choosing our words

carefully in certain situations is more

important than choosing grammatical

structures (Harmer 1991).

Types of Collocation

Adjectives and Nouns

• Heavy rain

Verbs and Nouns

• Take a photo

Verbs and Prepositions

• Depend on

• Look at

Have

A party

A problem

Anaccident

Difficulty

A dream

Collocation Activities

Gap texts.

◦ I’m sure you’ll ________fun on the school

trip.

Sentences that include collocation

errors.

◦ I cannot do [make] up my mind.

Collocation Activities

word combinations that collocate with

certain verbs.

do: the laundry, homework, the bed,

exercise.

A brainstorming activity.

Get

together

married

The phone

A cold

up

in

Collocation Activities

Put expression in categories.

Evidence (2)

Jail

Police station

Court

Crime

Suicide

Alabi

Accident

Homicide

Drug

money

What is the difference?

Make a mistake checkpoint a storm in a tea cup