The Prime Machine: a User-Friendly Corpus Tool for English Language Teaching and Self-Tutoring Based on the Lexical Priming Theory of Language
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The Prime Machine: A user-friendly corpus tool for English language teaching and self-tutoring based on the Lexical Priming theory of language Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by Stephen Jeaco. June 2015 Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... 7 List of Tables .......................................................................................................................... 15 List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. 19 Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 21 List of conference presentations arising from this project .................................................... 23 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 24 Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................... 25 1.1 Research questions ...................................................................................................... 26 1.2 Structure ...................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter 2: Survey of Students and Teachers ......................................................................... 29 2.1. Background, teaching context and personal motivations .......................................... 29 2.1.1 English study skills for International students ...................................................... 29 2.1.2 English teaching in China ...................................................................................... 30 2.1.3 Personal motivations ............................................................................................ 32 2.1.4 Language learner strategies and dictionary resources ......................................... 33 2.1.5 Corpora as a source for additional examples ....................................................... 33 2.1.6 The internet and other technology to collect and share examples ...................... 35 2.1.7 Items in L2 with limited L1 congruence ................................................................ 36 2.1.8 Purpose of the current phase of this research ..................................................... 37 2.2. Method ....................................................................................................................... 37 2.2.1 Participants ............................................................................................................... 37 2.2.1.1 The institutions .................................................................................................. 37 2.2.1.2 Teacher survey ................................................................................................... 38 2.2.1.3 Student survey and test ..................................................................................... 38 2.2.2 Materials ................................................................................................................... 39 2.2.3 Procedure .................................................................................................................. 40 2.3. Results and Analysis .................................................................................................... 40 2.3.1 Results of the teacher questionnaire .................................................................... 41 2.3.2 Results of the student test and questionnaire ..................................................... 46 2.4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 53 2.4.1 Limitations ............................................................................................................. 53 2.4.2 Implications for EAP teaching and support ........................................................... 53 2.4.3 Implications for design and scope of future tools ................................................ 54 Page 2 of 403 2.4.4 Lexical Priming ...................................................................................................... 55 2.5 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 57 Chapter 3: Software architecture and data pathways ........................................................... 58 3.1 Fundamental design considerations ............................................................................ 58 3.2 Corpus selection ........................................................................................................... 63 3.3 Choice of programming languages .............................................................................. 66 3.4 How do you store a corpus? ........................................................................................ 75 3.4.1 Store data as they come ....................................................................................... 75 3.4.2 Store data ready for output .................................................................................. 76 3.4.3 Store as XML ......................................................................................................... 76 3.4.4 Make the data as few as possible ......................................................................... 77 3.5 The refactoring process ............................................................................................... 83 3.5.1 Corpus formats ...................................................................................................... 83 3.5.2 The Prime Machine corpus refactoring application .............................................. 89 3.5.3 Summary tables .................................................................................................... 93 3.6 Design of the user interface ......................................................................................... 95 3.6.1 Query syntax, auto-complete and spelling support .............................................. 95 3.6.2 Helping users compare words............................................................................... 99 3.6.3 Helping users compare results from two corpora .............................................. 102 3.7 Summary .................................................................................................................... 103 Chapter 4: Collocation ......................................................................................................... 105 4.1 Collocation and language teaching ............................................................................ 105 4.2 Defining collocation ................................................................................................... 107 4.3 What do concordancers offer in terms of collocation? ............................................. 111 4.4 Multi-word units of more than 2 words .................................................................... 115 4.5 Priorities for Collocation in The Prime Machine ........................................................ 118 4.6 Mutual Information measures used in The Prime Machine ...................................... 120 4.7 A new approach for collocation ................................................................................. 125 4.8 Uses of collocation results ......................................................................................... 136 4.8.1 Collocation clouds and tables ............................................................................. 136 4.8.2 Collocations and concordance lines .................................................................... 140 4.8.3 Collocations and search query formulation ........................................................ 144 4.8.4 Collocations and indications of semantic association ........................................ 147 4.8.5 Collocations and concordance line ranking and selection .................................. 153 Page 3 of 403 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 172 Chapter 5: Further features of Lexical Priming .................................................................... 173 5.1 Measuring tendencies for text position ..................................................................... 173 5.1.1 Headings and Position in Text ............................................................................. 176 5.1.2 Making Position in Text more prominent in concordance lines ......................... 177 5.1.3 Position in text .................................................................................................... 190 5.1.4 Position in sentence ............................................................................................ 202 5.1.5 Icons to represent different positions ................................................................ 208 5.2 Colligation .................................................................................................................. 209 5.2.1 Sentence Complexity .........................................................................................