CORPUS!

      Hello everyone! I hope your midterm exams went well and that you’ve had a chance to relax! 

   

      I’m very excited to share with you my first experience using a corpus in today’s blog post! For our "Current Issues in Teaching" course, my friends Perihan Bozdağ, Eda Karaca, and I prepared corpus-assisted activities

     It was a task that we had fun with as a group but also found a bit challenging. Our task was to create a teaching material and a lesson plan using corpus data, focusing on the grammar topic “for/since” for high school students. Also, our plan is based on the ASSURE model for EFL learners enrolled in a high school in Turkey. 

      While designing this material, we tried to choose vibrant and engaging colors to make the activity fun and encouraging for learning. We also made sure to include activities that allow for both individual and group work. For this activity, we used the COCA website and designed the material using Canva. 

      You can access our material and lesson plan through this link.

       In our activity, we first included a matching exercise to assess the students' prior knowledge. This will help guide us in preparing the appropriate materials for them. Then, we added an explanation that helps students understand the use of "for" and "since" through COCA, encouraging them to explore further. After providing a page where students can list their findings, we also created a closing activity to assess the knowledge learned. 

      Of course, there are some disadvantages to this material as well. Since the COCA material contains many options, students might get confused while using it and may not know what to do. In this case, the teacher needs to explain the use of the corpus clearly, step by step. This can also be a challenge for teachers, as there are many filtering options within the material. 

      Overall, I’ve tried to explain the activities we’ve designed and the process behind them. We’re looking forward to receiving your feedback on our activities! Until the next post, take care, and don’t forget to take care of your skin!