Mining Corpora: Students as academic language investigators

Mining Corpora: Students as academic language investigators

Grant:
Teaching with Technology Institute (TTI)
Academic Year:
2011 - 2012 (June 1, 2011 through May 31, 2012)
Funding Requested:
$2,500.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
pbogart
Overview of the Project:
Many students writing in their second language face a particularly difficult challenge when it comes to selecting appropriate "collocations." These word combinations "sound right" to fluent English speakers because the words pattern together in high frequency. This project facilitates student use of online "corpora" databases of real language use. However, these databases are designed for language researchers, and can thus be unwieldy for language learners. We therefore created an online video tutorial showing students how to conduct collocation investigations based on word choices in their own writing. Students logged their process and findings in a Sitemaker database, where they could also view the findings of their peers. Students reported being pleased and surprised to find a resource for discovering how words pattern in real language use. Future work will focus on developing additional online tutorials to support more sophisticated searches, and applying both the tools and the findings on vocabulary learning to other language courses.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:
(1) enable undergraduate writers to investigate collocation patterns for editing their word choices in academic writing in English(2) identify effective ways to deploy screencast-based online tutorials as a mechanism to teach content and to train students to use unfamiliar technology(3) identify effective ways to track student vocabulary investigations and findings
Project Achievements:
The screencasts on using online corpora and the Sitemaker database where students can log their vocabulary investigations enabled ELI 120 undergraduate student writers to change their learning and editing behaviors. Namely, students adopted online corpora as a key reference resource when composing and revising their academic writing, where these tools were routinely rejected by students as too intimidating in prior years. Students gained awareness of how words pattern together in specific usage contexts, evidenced by their ongoing reports on their findings and in teacher-student writing conferences. Beyond the ELI 120 course itself, which will continue utilizing screencasts to introduce students to the concept of collocations and to online corpora, colleagues in other courses at ELI have adopted screencasts and sitemaker vocabulary-investigation websites as a core feature of the curriculum. The Language Resource Center has been working on rolling out a mobile version of Sitemaker-based vocabulary investigation tools that originated in this project. In my own teaching, I've integrated screencasts and video clips embedded within UM lessons to create online tutorials to support student learning in each of the other courses I teach, expanding the range of resources available to students.
Continuation:
As described above, the tools built in this project will continue to be integrated into my undergraduate writing course, and have been adapted for use in other ELI writing, speaking, and integrated skills courses. This project has also added a new set of tools to my teacher's toolbox (Camtasia for screencasts, UM Lessons for embedding video in tutorials, Java-enhanced Sitemaker databases), so that I anticipate continuing to build online tutorials to respond to areas of student difficulty, and continuing to work on ways to support and encourage student tracking of the content they are learning via online databases and mobile apps.
Dissemination:
I have given two presentations about this project and follow-up applications to interested faculty. I will be offering an Enriching Scholarship workshop in May 2012, focusing on creating screencast-based online tutorials. I'm continuing to review data from the original fall project for future possible publication.
Advice to your Colleagues:
This project was greatly facilitated by the brainstorming contributions of multiple tech gurus on campus, each of whom brought a different orientation and set of solutions to the table. However, brainstorming led to new challenges, as it broadened the potential horizons of the project. Indeed one of the primary challenges of the project was constraining the scope narrowly enough to develop and realistically implement a meaningful set of learning tools; narrowing that scope early on was critical to the project's success. Another valuable process near the start of the project was giving each of the possible technology solutions a "tryout" in order to see with my own content whether and how they could really do what we were seeking. This process quickly eliminated a broad array of possibilities, and introduced me to those resources for other future projects where they might be more applicable.
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