Giving Students the Tools: Looking at Teaching and Learning using Corpora

Abstract

This article discusses a pilot project aimed at giving tertiary students a wider repertoire of resources to use in language learning, with a particular focus on Italian. This project responds to the exponential increase in and access to online data and the potential value such data represent for students studying additional languages at tertiary level. By examining whether current language students are aware of online resources, such as linguistic corpora and other potential applications of big data, we aim to provide an insight into the possible uses of corpus-assisted learning in the language classroom. In this paper, we detail a project undertaken in 2017 with undergraduate students of Italian in a major metropolitan university. Our project directed students to complete a translation task using corpora-based resources and assessed their experience through a post-assessment survey. Subsequently, we present our initial findings in relation to the possibilities of a corpus-based approach to language teaching and learning. While today’s students are already predisposed to relying on online resources as part of their language studies, our results suggest students are not aware of emerging online resources such as corpora. Moreover, even when these resources are presented to students, the complex nature of the software programs used to interrogate corpora often results in their underutilisation.