Some Ways in Which an L1 Corpus May Be of Use in Second Language Learning

Some ways in which an L1 Corpus may be of use in Second Language Learning

Corpora (in Language Teaching) = Monolingual L2 corpora + Learner corpora + Translation corpora + Comparable corpora + Monolingual L1 corpora Conditions for exploitation of L1 Corpus

A monolingual L1 corpus can be used ...... when learners share a common mother tongue and activities are organized by teachers (not self-access) and L1L2 translation is one aspect of teaching methodology Areas of exploitation

(1) to help the learning of grammatical or lexico-grammatical items which are problematic for contrastive reasons

(2) to develop awareness of, and translation strategies for, problematic interlingual areas of lexis and phraseology

(3) as a source of authentic texts for translation into the second language (1) to help the learning of grammatical or lexico-grammatical items which are problematic for contrastive reasons

General methodology: Examples of the potential problem are retrieved from the L1 corpus. These then provide the basis for L1L2 translation work

Suggested didactic uses: (i) to re-inforce ongoing learning (ii) as remedial work (iii) as the basis for testing

Example problem: Many Italian learners of English identify quale? with which? and thus overuse which at the expense of other possibilities, notably what and what type/sort of? Corpus-based exercise: Students read a set of corpus extracts and decide whether which or what is the more appropriate translation for quale. Extracts have been selected where there is considered to be a direct choice between which and what. The exercise is suitable for students of an elementary level upwards since they are not necessarily asked to translate the full texts.

Examples of corpus extracts: 1).... imprenditore e stilista nello stesso tempo, Luana conosce sia gli aspetti pratici che quelli teorici del lavoro fashion. “Quale delle due "facce della medaglia" preferisci?” - “Quella creativa. La mia però è una posizione fortunata perché ……”

2)… abitanti della capanna, dimostrando loro che idioti erano stati a pensare che potesse essere figlio di qualcun altro. Quale prova poteva essere più evidente del secondo bambino, gemello del primo, nato morto?

3)… con una presenza commerciale e di servizio e con una sezione produttiva dalla fine del corrente anno. “Quale è, signor presidente, la brand-image di Sony nel mondo e quali sono i risultati ottenuti da Sony Italia … ?” (2) problematic interlingual areas of lexis and phraseology

Example areas:

(i) CULTURE SPECIFIC ITEMS, e.g. Italian concept of concorso and lack of equivalent concept in British culture

(ii) ONE-TO-MANY RELATIONSHIPS, e.g. Italian word goloso and multiple English equivalents

(iii) NON-ISOMORPHISM OF PROBABLE SYNTACTIC CATEGORY, e.g. Italian noun coetaneo probably being rendered with an adjectival phrase [“Era un mio coetaneo” - “He was about the same age as me”]

Corpus-based exercise (one-to-many relationships): Students work in pairs. They are given a number of contexts each containing the key word or phrase, in this example the Italian word goloso and morphologically related words. Students are asked to consider how they would translate the underlined part of the text into English. They are allowed to use one specific reference book, a corpus-based thesaurus designed for foreign language students (the Longman Language Activator). When they have finished translating, class discussion ensues regarding the various possibilities suggested. [(ii) ONE-TO-MANY RELATIONSHIPS]

Examples of corpus extracts:

1) La regina Elisabetta-II ama bere un Pimm's prima di cena. La regina madre ... ha una passione per il gin and tonic. La principessa Anna è affezionata alla buona birra scura. La principessa Margaret è golosa di scotch whisky. Sarah, la rossa consorte del principe Andrea .....

2) Sisi si fa venire le convulsioni e diventa viola. La mamma rinuncia a portarla dal pasticciere. La sera riferisce l'accaduto a nostro padre; di mia sorella dice :“Poverina, è così golosa quella bestiola e poi, quelle crisi di rabbia, la bambina si sente veramente male”.

3) “Ti piace mangiare?” - “Mi piace molto la buona cucina, ma non sono una golosa che non sa resistere davanti a una fetta di torta. Amo cucinare e faccio attenzione a quello che mangio. Preferisco verdura cotta al vapore e cibi genuini.” (3) authentic texts for translation into the second language

Advantages: (i) the text is already in electronic form and may thus be adapted very easily in terms of layout and language content. (ii) helps standardize more efficiently the type and difficulty of L1 text, of importance especially where exams are concerned.

Restrictions: The corpus must be structured in such a way as to be able to retrieve appropriate sections of text.

TALC 2000, Graz, July 19-23, 2000