Corpora in the classroom: an

introduction to the Cambridge

English Profile Corpus

A corpus is…

• a collection of pieces of language text in

an electronic form, selected according

to external criteria to represent, as far

as possible, a language or language

variety (Sinclair 2004)

The Cambridge Learner Corpus

• Joint development by CUP

and Cambridge ESOL

• Over 45 million words

• Over 180,000 exam scripts

• Grows each year by

2-3 million words

• All CEFR levels

• 138 first languages

• 203 countries

• Over 21 million words coded for errors

How do you search a corpus?

• Concordances (KWIC)

• Frequency lists

B2 VANTAGE 16067 128.0

C2 MASTERY 14829 323.8

C1 EFFECTIVE OPERATIONAL PROFICIENCY

11610 144.3

B1 THRESHOLD 8367 42.8

A2 WAYSTAGE 2300 22.1

A1 BREAKTHROUGH 132 45.0

Frequency for way

C2 MASTERY 18295 470.4

C1 EFFECTIVE OPERATIONAL PROFICIENCY

12232 179.0

B2 VANTAGE 11548 108.3

B1 THRESHOLD 3060 18.5

A2 WAYSTAGE 193 2.2

A1 BREAKTHROUGH 15 6.0

Frequency for thing

Cambridge Learner Corpus

What can we find out from the (coded)

Cambridge Learner Corpus?

• How often do students make a particular type of mistake?

• What type of mistakes do they make?

• Which students make this mistake?

Urdu 578

Indonesian 342

Korean 330

Lithuanian 296

Croatian 278

Polish 269

Japanese 223

Russian 208

Bulgarian 172

Hungarian 115

Swedish 39

Spanish 34

Relative frequency

of this error by

language

Which language group

is most likely to omit

the in/definite article?

The Cambridge English Profile Corpus

(CEPC)

NON EXAM DATA

• Tasks accessible across all six CEFR proficiency levels rather than for specific levels

• Choice, i.e. provide learners with a range of tasks scenarios/stimuli to respond to

• Prompts which move away from ‘exam like’ questions

NON EXAM DATA

• More open-ended tasks with less structuring

• No word limits

• Functionally organised tasks rather than those designed to elicit specific linguistic items

• Some tasks use a visual or audio stimulus

Data collection process • Each student signs a consent form

• Students log into our online data collection portal

• Students complete a questionnaire asking about their background in English language learning

• Students complete 3 short tasks

• Students optionally upload their ‘favourite piece of work’

Sample task set

1. Look at the pictures. Write

a letter to the camera shop.

Complain about your camera.

2. Choose 3 or more of the

pictures and write a story.

3. What is your favourite book or movie? Who are the people in it and what

happens to them?

For this section, choose either 4

or 5 and write whatever you feel

like writing!

Balancing the corpus

Wide variety of contexts

Covering a range of variables:

• First language of learners

• Country where data is collected

• Age of learner

• Level of learner

Corpus informed teaching

• Real authentic examples of language in use

• Frequency lists can show us the most useful vocabulary to learn

• We can also look at the most frequent sense of a word

• Constantly updated, to capture language change over time (so you’d

never waste time teaching old fashioned language use, like ‘raining

cats and dogs’)

• With the CEPC, you can save teaching time by checking if your own

students do have problems in a particular area

Meanings and usages

Corpora can be used to

• Disambiguate close synonyms

• Discover word environments

• Teach words with lots of different

meanings

Meanings and usages

Corpora can be used to

• Disambiguate close synonyms:

Build and Construct

• Discover word environments

• Teach words with lots of different

meanings

Close synonyms:

build and construct

build

houses

nests

home plans

bridges

construct

model

theory

sentences

argument

building

Meanings and usages

Corpora can be used to

• Disambiguate close synonyms

• Discover word environments

• Teach words with lots of different

meanings

Meanings and usages

Corpora can be used to

• Disambiguate close synonyms

• Discover word environments

• Teach words with lots of different

meanings

Words with lots of different meanings

• How many meanings are there for way?

• METHOD: how you do something

• I think it's the best way to relax.

• ROUTE: the route you take to get from one place to another

• The shortest way to get there is going along Sarmiento Avenue.

• by the way: used when you say something new or on a different subject

• Oh, by the way, my name's Julie.

• DIRECTION: the direction in which something is facing or travels

• Which way up should this box be?

• DISTANCE: a distance or a period of time

• I like this best because [it] is not a long way from home.

• no way (informal): used to tell someone that something is impossible

• I'm sorry but there's no way we can help you.

• a/sb's way of life: the manner in which a person lives

• She told us all about her way of life in Japan.

• either way: used to talk about two possibilities where the result will be the same

• You can get there by train or bus - either way it'll take an hour.

• one way or another: in some way that is not stated

• All of them made a big difference [to] our personal life and have affected it one way or another.

• one way or the other: in any way that is possible

• We have to make a decision one way or the other about what needs to be done.

• the other way round/around: happening in the opposite way

• I thought the older people would be more offended than the young people, but it was the other way round.

• make your way: to get to a place

• We slowly made our way down the river.

• all the way: the complete distance

• I drove all the way to Bergen in only one day.

• in a way; in some/many ways: used to say that you think something is partly true

• I think that many people would like shops to be open all the time, and it might be good in some ways.

What problems do learners have?

Teaching lexical item ‘make’

EFL learners, even at advanced proficiency level, have great difficulty with high frequency verbs

(Altenburg and Granger 2001)

More possibilities

• Boost vocabulary

• Countable/uncountable nouns

• Phrasal verbs

• Prepositions

Boost vocabulary

– Use familiar, known vocabulary e.g. eye

Countable/uncountable nouns

• - information, advice

First of all your brochure is full of missleading <#CN>

informations | information </#CN>, all the services that

I was expecting and your company advertized did not

exist or did not reach the standard.

Here are some <#CN> advices | advice </#CN> which I

think will be very helpful

Phrasal verbs

• Look concordance

Sample exercise – phrasal verbs

Match the beginning of the sentences to the correct ending.

1. Mark and Angela looked a) after them when their parents are at work.

2. Now I’m 23, and when I look b) into the details of the contract

3. It will be amazing! I’m really looking c) up to them. I hope that one day I’ll be like them!

4. After my studies, I started looking d) at each other and started to laugh.

5. Their grandparents look e) for a job.

6. They’re so pretty! I look f) forward to seeing everybody.

7. We have asked our lawyers to look g) back, I’ve learned a lot in the last 3 years

Sample exercise: preposition • Which of the examples below uses ‘at’ wrongly? What

preposition should have been used?

www.englishprofile.org