First, there is the issue of' real' English. At the end of Chapter 5 the authors address the concerns of those such as Jenkins (2007) that challenge the supremacy of the native speaker, and advocate the need to develop English as lingua franca (ELF) models for ELT curriculum development. O'Keefe, McCarthy, and Carter argue, 'It has yet to be demonstrated that ELF exists as a variety of English rather than as a function [italics in original] of the use of English, which responds to every context differently (rather in the way that people adapt their language for use with small children or animals). The assumption that ELF is a variety brings with it several common inferences: that the variety is in some way a "reduced" form of the native variety that the reduced repertoire can inform a consequently reduced syllabus, and that idioms are likely to be one of the Hublot Replica Watches(http://www.imitatewatch.com/GoodsBrand/Replica-Hublot-Watches-44.html) features that can be dispensed with. [...] But if we are in fact talking about a function of English, then there would seem to be no a priori reasons to "reduce" anything; users would make their own choice from their available repertoire of forms, just as any normal person would when adapting to any context' (pp. 98-9).
By and large, this is the approach that is advocated throughout the book when the question of the use of native speaker data arises—it's an issue of choice for learners and teachers, rather than an issue of prescription. While this may well be a sensible position, when it's put alongside the CUP marketing strategy of the 'Real English Guarantee' it's also likely to raise hackles—as did the original CO BUILD promise of 'Helping learners with Real English'. Like the debate in lexicography around invented, adapted, or authentic examples which has been going on since the 19805 (see Rundell 1996), I think the argument in ELT will also run and run. The great strength of this volume is that it makes a contribution which demands attention and which is reasoned and empirically based.
Second, there's the issue of the emphasis on spoken English. While I fully accept the authors' argument that the spoken language has been neglected, I would also argue that in English language teaching, it's been neglected for a number of important reasons. Firstly, the debate around whose English should be taken as a model is less of an issue with edited, written texts, especially in rapidly growing areas of written interaction like business communication, international administration, and academic communication. Because of this I would suggest that it is these areas which offer teachers and students the least problematic starting point for bringing corpora to the classroom. An additional benefit of starting here is that it's now relatively easy for teachers and students to get hold of a lot of this type of language through public domain sources (e.g. online journals, European Union documentation), and these texts can often be analyzed immediately with easily available corpus tools (or even via free research tools like WebCorp).
This last issue of ease of access and processing leads me to my last point. Spoken corpora are fiercely expensive and difficult to put together— but there are some that are in the public domain— for example, the British National Corpus, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Speech Events (MlCASE), 3 and the British Academic Speech Act Corpus Breitling Replica Watches(http://www.luv-replica.com/GoodsBrand/Breitling_Replica_Watches-4.html) (BASE).4 So while I can understand why they have chosen to focus on spoken language, I still regret that the authors have drawn so many examples from non-public domain corpora. By doing this, they have offered tantalizing glimpses of exciting realities, shown their readers the bright lights of the big city, but have then, in effect, told them to go back to the farm as only a few CUP authors and researchers have access to this material.
So, I found From Corpus to Classroom to be a compelling read, and, from an applied corpus linguist's perspective, an important book, full of insight, revelations, and new ways of approaching problems of description and analysis. However, it may not be such a useful read for the classroom teacher looking for a way of enhancing their next lesson with an upper-intermediate group, or for the teacher trainer looking for practical ways of introducing students to corpus applications in foreign language teaching. Although this book makes a very strong contribution to the field, I do not feel that it offers these readers the clear pathway they might be hoping for.
Author Resource:-
It is possible to find Replica Watches that look at feel just like the original. Another advantage to a replica watch is that the value of the watch is less.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.talkinmince.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
