Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University

Graduate Program in English as an International Language

Course Syllabus
Academic Year 2018

1. Course Number 2010717

2. Course Credit 3
3. Course Title Seminar in English Linguistics: Corpus Linguistics
4. Faculty/Department Graduate School/ Department of English
5. Semester Semester 1
6. Academic Year 2018
7. Instructor Dr. Michael Barlow
e-mail: mi.barlow@auckland.ac.nz
8. Measurement method LG - Letter Grade (A B+ B C+ C D+ D F)  SU -
S/U
9. Type of course  Semester Course
10. Condition None
11. Status Elective course
12. Curriculum Graduate Program in English as an International
Language
13. Degree Graduate
14. Hours/Week 45 hours, Monday - Friday 9 -12, 1-3
31 July – Aug 10, 2018
15. Course Description
Seminar in English Linguistics: Corpus Linguistics

16. Course Outline

In this course students will learn how to analyse written and spoken texts (corpora) in a variety of ways in order to
obtain an understanding of language as it is used rather than language as it prescribed or language as it appears to
be, based on speakers' intuitions. Thus, one important component of the course is a series of 'lab' activities that will
enable you to produce corpus-based descriptions of lexis (vocabulary), grammar, and discourse. Building on the
foundation of a corpus-based analysis of language, we can then proceed to consider the relevance of corpora for
research in applied linguistics and for applications in language teaching, focussing mostly on syllabus design and
materials preparation.

Students taking the course will learn:

 to create and understand different kinds of word lists

 to analyse different corpora to obtain information on lexical and grammatical patterns

 to relate corpus findings to our understanding of grammar

 to exploit learner corpora to investigate aspects of second language acquisition

 to understand the principles underlying the use of corpus-based analyses in syllabus design

 to become familiar with different uses of corpus-based materials in the language classroom

Typically, class sessions will consist of a class session followed by a hands-on lab session using simple text analysis
software, typically a concordance program.

Day Date 9:00 a.m. – 12: 00 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Readings (Subject to
p.m. availability)
1 Tue 31 July Word frequency lists. Creating a Barlow. Chaps 1 and

1
 2018 Structure of word wordlist. Word 3. Introduction.
lists. What is a word? cloud. Lextutor. Wordlists and
Zipf’s law frequency lists.

2 Wed 1 August Wordlists and Creating a

2018 reading/vocabulary. keyword list
Core vocabulary.
Academic word list
3 Thursday 2 Collocations. Ngrams Collocate. Simpson-Vlach and
August 2018 Lexical bundles. Lancsbox. R. Ellis. 2010. An
Collocation lists. Wordlist to Academic Formulas
Statistics for Collocation list List: New Methods
in Phraseology
collocations
Research. Applied
Linguistics 31(4):
487-512

Martinez and
Schmitt. 2012. A
Phrasal Expressions
List. Applied
Linguistics 33(3):
299-320

4 Friday 3 Concordances.Regex. Concordancing Barlow, Chap 4.

August 2018 Lexicogrammar Searching for words
and phrases.

Sinclair, J. (2003).
Task 2 Underlying
regularity, Task 3
Words as
liabilities. In
Reading
concordances (pp.
9-21). London:
Pearson.

5 Monday 6 Learner corpora. Learner corpora Barlow, Chap 6. The

August 2018 analysis search for syntax
Tagged corpora
Barlow. Learner
Corpora chapter in
Ellis and
Barkhuisen. (Online)

John A. Hawkins
and Paula Buttery
(2010). Criterial
Features in Learner
Corpora: Theory and
Illustrations. English
Profile Journal, 1,
6 Tuesday 7 Corpora and Corpus-based Hughes, R. 2010.
August 2018 language teaching. materials What a corpus tell
DDL development. us about grammar
teaching materials.
In O'Keeffe, A. and
McCarthy, M. The
2
 Routledge
Handbook of Corpus
Linguistics. 401-
412.

Chambers, Farr, and

O'Riordan. 2011
Language teachers
with corpora in
mind: from starting
steps to walking tall.
Language
Learning Journal
39. 1: 85-104.

7 Wednesday 8 Academic writing. UAM CorpusTool. Warschauer and

August 2018 Move analysis. WordSkew Page. 2006.
Automatic Writing Automated writing
Evaluation evaluation: defining
the classroom
research agenda.
Language Teaching
Research 10,2
(2006); pp. 1–24

Cotos 2011.
Potential of
Automated Writing
Evaluation
Feedback. CALICO
Journal 28:2

8 Thursday 9 Research topics Corpus analysis

August 2018
9 Friday 10 Parallel corpora and ParaConc
August 2018 translation

Barlow, M. 2012. Concordancing and Corpus Analysis Using MP2.2. Available online

16.1 Instructional Methods

Each day will be divided into morning and afternoon sessions. Every morning session will focus on one of
the key themes in corpus linguistics; every afternoon session will involve practical activities related to corpus
analysis.

17. Evaluation
 Students are expected to attend class regularly.
 Students will discuss and answer questions on the readings.
 Students will give short presentations to the whole class.
 Students will complete two assignments based on the analysis of corpus data

Attendance 20%
Participation 20%
2 Assignments (25% each) 50%
Presentation 10%

3
Criteria

80% and above A 75 – 79% B+

70 – 74% B 65 – 69% C+
60 – 64% C 55 – 59% D+
50 – 54% D 49% and below

1. Teaching Evaluation
18.1. Evaluation through the CUCAS – SCE system