11th Annual CamTESOL Conference,February 28th 2015

Three Learner Corpora useful for English
Language Teaching in Junior and Senior HighSchoolCorpus A: Corpus compiled by textbooks
authorized by the Ministry of Education andEIKEN exam texts

Compilation of the Learner Bilingual Corpus andIts Use in Class: Making Teaching Materials Using“EasyConc.xlsm”

Corpus B: Learner corpus: English texts
produced by students

11th Annual CamTESOL Conference on English
Language Teaching
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
28 February – 01 March 2015
Shigeyuki Hidai
hidai_ki@lit.tamagawa.ac.jp
Tamagawa University, TokyoCorpus B ― What students expressed by themselves inEnglish
Corpus findings: Concordance of ‘-ed participles’ inpassive formCorpus C: Learner parallel corpus: Japaneseand its paraphrased English Texts. The English
texts are the ones students could not expressin English.

Pedagogical Implications from the findings of Corpus B:
data driven learning by using past participles in passivevoice

Concordance of ‘¥b(am|is|are|was|were)¥b (¥w+ ){0,3}(¥w+ed)¥b’ fromthe Corpus of Japanese Culture produced by junior high school students.

Pedagogical Implications from the findings of Corpus B:
data driven learning by using past participles in passivevoice

The Dilemma of the Learners of English
Project funded by Japan Society for thePromotion of Science KAKENHI award(#25370652)

Why couldn’t Japanese learners of English express themselves
in English?
 The main reasons: They don’t have enough vocabulary to express.
 Vocabulary input from the textbooks authorized by theMinistry of Education is not enough.
 1200 words should be taught to Junior high school
students
 3000 words should be taught to senior high school
students
Without grammar, little communication may be possible;
without vocabulary, no communication is possible. (Folse, 2004)1

11th Annual CamTESOL Conference,February 28th 2015

Theoretical background―Without input, output cannot be expected

The relation between input and output

Corpus C―Six stages of Data Collection forJapanese-English Bilingual Corpus 1/2(Ellis, 1997:35)
It is very important to know what they could
not express in English.
 How can we utilize what they wanted toexpress but couldn’t in English teaching?
Corpus C―Six stages of Data Collection forJapanese-English Bilingual Corpus 2/2
Stage 4
 Each question in Japanese from students is translated
into English by Japanese teachers and native Englishspeaking teachers.
 Stage 5
 Data of Japanese questions and their English translations
are incorporated into EasyConc_v.2.0.xls.
 Stage 6
 Some pieces of grammatical information are retrieved bycorpus tools in order to make worksheets for English
classes.

Stage 1Implementing communication activities in English
Classes.
Stage 2
 After the activities, students are asked to write theexpressions in Japanese that they wanted to use in
English but couldn’t during the activities
Stage 3
 Each question in Japanese from Students is input into
each cell on Excel spreadsheet.

Stage 1
―Example of a communication activity in English classfor the compilation of Japanese-English Bilingual Corpus
Data Collection: Chat in pairs about weekends and holidays

Stage 1―Example of a communication activity in English Classfor the compilation of Japanese-English Bilingual Corpus

Stage ２ to 5
―Compilation of Japanese-English Bilingual Corpus:
Matching each Japanese expression with its English
translation on an Excel spreadsheet

Speaking Test called Interview ChallengeTelling to the native English-speaking teacher about one lesson from thetextbooks authorized by the Japanese Ministry of Education

Translation from Japanese expressions into English inassociation with a native speaker of English＜Copyright restricts the display of images here.＞

Last 13 examples out of 2895 questions
from junior & senior high school students

Project funded by Japan Society for thePromotion of Science KAKENHI award(#25370652)

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11th Annual CamTESOL Conference,February 28th 2015

Stage 6―Pedagogical Implication: Supplying learners with
EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm as a production dictionary
Stage 6―The result of the retrieval: English sentences including
Japanese keywords ‘勝’ or ‘負’.

Using EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm as a Japanese-English dictionary
Searching for English sentences using Japanese keywords

Stage 6―Pedagogical Implication: Supplying learners withEasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm as a production dictionary
Stage 6―The result of the retrieval: English sentences including
English keywords ‘win’, ‘wins’, ‘winning’, ‘won’, ‘lose’,‘loses’, ‘losing’, or ‘lost’.

Using EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm as a English-Japanese dictionary
Searching for English sentences using English keywords

Extracts from the retrieval

The input of ‘lose’ and its conjugation from New
Crown English Series Book 1, 2 and 3, theauthorized textbooks
Concordance of ‘(¥blose¥b|¥bloses¥b|¥blost¥b)’ from New Crown English SeriesBook 1, 2 and 3

Corpus finding 1: lexical verb ‘lose’ retrieved
from EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm
Concordance of ‘lose’, ‘loses’ and ‘lost’ from EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm.

There are only two sentences
retrieved from New Crown

English Series Book 1, 2 and 3

for junior high school students!

Partial extract from the result

Project funded by Japan Society for thePromotion of Science KAKENHI award(#25370652)

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11th Annual CamTESOL Conference,February 28th 2015

Pedagogical Implication 1: Ideas for creatingteaching materials for English classCreating a short story by using three words, such as ‘play’, ‘win’, ‘lose’.

The input of ‘because’ and ‘while’ from New
Crown English Series Book 1, 2, and 3, theauthorized textbooks
Concordance of ‘while’ and ‘because’ from New Crown English Series Book 1, 2 and3

Corpus finding 2: subordinating conjunctions,‘because’Corpus finding 3: subordinating conjunctions,‘while’Concordance of ‘なので’, ‘だから’, ‘原因で’, ‘理由’, ‘ために’, ‘のせいで’ from EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm

Concordance of ‘ながら’ from EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm

Partial extract from the result
Partial extract from the result

Pedagogical Implication from corpus finding 2&3: Getting students to be familiar withsubordinating conjunctions
Gapfill exercises: Fill in the each bracket with a suitable linking wordin the box.
1. I am very sleepy () I was reading all night long.
2. I read a book () listening to music.
3. I went shopping () I wanted to buy a birthday present for myfriend, Yukikobecause / while / if
4. I eat dinner () watching TV.

The input of the post modification of relative
pronoun ‘that’ from New Crown English Series,
the authorized textbooks
Concordance of ‘that’ from New Crown English Series Book 3

Matching Exercises: Use a linking word in Box B to match the sentence partsin boxes A and C.
Box ABox Bbox C
1. I was eating
1. I can't play the
piano well
spaghetti.
because2. I watched the
2. it stars my favoritenews
whileactor.
3. I wanted to seethe movie
3. I am a beginner.

Project funded by Japan Society for thePromotion of Science KAKENHI award(#25370652)

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11th Annual CamTESOL Conference,
February 28th 2015

Corpus finding 4: postmodification by relativeclauses
Postmodification doesn't exist in Japanese language.
Concordance of ‘買’, ‘欲’ from EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm

Partial extract from the resultConclusion






It is important for teachers to know the expressions thatlearners want to use in English but can’t through communication
activities in your English classes.
Why don’t you compile bilingual corpus for your students? Itwill be a useful resource for your teaching.
Bilingual corpus software such as EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm is easy
to get from the Internet. Without that software, it would be
impossible to retrieve necessary information from bilingualcorpus.
If you change Japanese data of EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm to yourmother tongue, you can create your own corpus. If you add
your data to EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm, you can create your own
EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm.

Pedagogical Implication 4: Getting students
used to postmodification by relative clauses
While working on the exercises below, Learners of English areexposed to frequently used expressions in communicativeactivities. Sentences in the exercise below are all from
EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm.
A sample word order exercise:
Put the words in the brackets in the right order.
1. I couldn't buy (a / wanted / book / I) in the bookstore.
2. That is (the / wanted / which / I / have / book) for a long time.
3. I went to the bookstore but I couldn't (find / books / I / any /wanted).
4. I went to the CD shop but I couldn't (one / I / which / wanted /find / the).
5. (one / I / of / accessories / bought) was 400 yen.

References
太田洋・日臺滋之. 2006.『新しい語彙指導のカタチ 学習者コーパスを活用して』.明治図書.
日臺滋之・太田洋. 2008.『1日10分で英語力をアップする！コーパスワーク５６』.明治図書.
日臺滋之. 2009.『中学 英語辞書の使い方ハンドブック』．明治図書．
日臺滋之．2015．「日本人高大生の自己表現活動を支える日英パラレルコーパスの構築とその活用」．2013年4月1日～2017年3月31日(予定)（科学研究費基盤研究(C) 研究課
題番号：25370652，研究代表者：日臺滋之）Retrieved fromhttps://kaken.nii.ac.jp/d/r/60459302.ja.html
Anthony, L. 2011. AntConc (ver 3.2.4w) [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda
University. Retrieved from http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html
Folse, S. Keith. 2004. Vocabulary Myths. The University of Michigan Press.
Hidai, Shigeyuki．2015．EasyConc_v.2.0.xlsm [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan:
Tamagawa University. Retrieved from http://www.tamagawa.ac.jp/research/jeparallel/
Lyttelton, D. ・日臺滋之. 20010．『英語スキット・ベスト５０―50 Skits for Learning
English―』. 明治図書．
Nation, I.S.P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammarof the English Language. London: Longman.
Takahashi, S, et al. 2011. New Crown English Series. Sanseido.
Tribble, C., & Jones, G. 1997. Concordances in the classroom. Houston, TX:Athelstan.

Thank you for your attention.

Shigeyuki Hidai
Tamagawa University, Tokyo, JAPANhidai_ki@lit.tamagawa.ac.jp

Project funded by Japan Society for thePromotion of Science KAKENHI award(#25370652)

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