Information
A concordancer is basically a tool that allows for
"researching the company that words keep" (Tim Johns). It provides
access to any electronic text, i.e. a text available on the computer or from
a CD-ROM based corpus or database or the Internet and searches for the
occurrence of particular words or structures or combination of words (e.g.
verbs and prepositions or an adjective and a noun separated by one or more
words, etc.). These are then listed in one-line contexts. Thus its basic
function is to extract lists with sample contexts of any word or structure
entered into the search option
Concordancing tools represent a special kind of
application as their use does not necessarily require the use of computers
with the learners themselves. Rather, it is more feasible that with the help
of the computer the language teacher creates innovative worksheets to be
discussed in class rather than have learners, particularly at lower levels, use
the software hands-on. Both uses have been described in great detail in a
book on the subject of concordancers in language learning by Chris
Tribble [Tribble, Chris (1989): Using concordances in the language
classroom. Longman]
The results of the search can then be used as a basis
for what Tim Johns (1994) refers to as data-driven learning. A learners task
might be to deduct themselves the exact difference in meaning, connotation,
and grammatical features of words. Language material can then be acquired in
a discovery-based or exploratory mode, which follows constructivist
paradigm, thus enabling learners to develop language awareness
in addition to structural knowledge of sets of
meanings. Tim Johns provides a complete website with samples and links on
data-driven learning (http://web.bham.ac.uk/johnstf/timconc.htm).
In addition, Chris
Tribble (1997) provides a manual on Using Concordances in the
Classroom.
We would like to invite anyone who works with
concordancers to share his or her experiences by contacting Bernd
Rüschoff by e-mail or via the
ICT in VOLLforum.
Samples
Samples for the use of concordancing
Further examples available online from other
sources
Tim
Johns Data-driven Learning Page - Tim has been putting together a Virtual
DDL Library containing samples of concordance-based teaching and
learning materials. He'd be interested to hear from other practitioners who
might be prepared to submit examples of their work for inclusion in the
Library (with full acknowledgment, of course).
Here are samples
of DDL materials produced by participants in a workshop which Tim Johns ran
in Usti nad Labem (North Bohemia) 21st-25th March 2000.
Using
concordance programs in the modern foreign languages classroom - A
module of the The
ICT4LT project
(Information & Communication Technology for Language Teacher) which aims
to develop a new Web-based training course in Information and Communications
Technology for Language Teachers. The project's two-year pilot phase runs
from September 1998 to August 2000, by which time a complete set of 15
training modules will have been completed.
Resources
Online Resources
For further information, we recommend the following
sites on the Internet:
Joseph Rezeau
is a teacher who uses computers in language learning. His website is very
useful:
Go directly to his examples
for concordances.
Look at Joseph's sample exercise on is
feeling vs. feels:
The father of data-driven learning, Tim
Johns, has lots of useful information on his website:
Here are a few websites with access to on-line texts and corpora:
COBUILD Bank of
English:
The British National Corpus:
ICAMET
- Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts: The
Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts is divided into
three subsections, namely the Prose Corpus 1100-1500 (a full-text database),
the Letter Corpus 1386-1688 (containing 254 complete letters from different
sources, arranged diachronically), and the Prose Varia Corpus (a mixture of
tagged, normalized, translated and otherwise manipulated or synopsized
texts). Since the texts are offered in their complete versions, they allow
literary, historical and topical analyses of various kinds, particularly
studies of cultural history.
Online access to corpora (online concordancing
· Simple
searches on the British National Corpus (BNC)
at Oxford: You can search for a single word or a phrase, for example Dogged
or brown bread, but also use tags & wildcards to search for parts
of speech etc.
· COBUILD
Direct Corpus Sampler:
The Cobuild Direct corpus is composed of 50 million words of contemporary
written and spoken text. To get a flavour of the type of linguistic data
that a corpus like this can provide, you can type in some simple queries
here and get a display of concordance lines from the corpus. The query
syntax allows you to specify word combinations, wildcards, part-of-speech
tags, and so on.
· Linguistic
Data Consortium
(University of Pennsylvania): Access to North American Corpora - LDC Online
- LDC-Online is a free service for LDC current year members. An interactive tutorial is available to everyone, as is a guest account permitting access to the Brown text corpus, the TIMIT speech
corpus and the Switchboard corpus
Online texts
·
Bibliomania
- a great starting point with a huge reference section, over 60 classic
novels on-line, as well as important classic non-fiction works including
Biography, Science, Economics and Ancient Texts, plus poetry. plus
Shakespeare ~ (In)complete Works, plus ...
·
The
Book Stack - an
index to on-line books
·
The
On-Line Books Page
- this index includes more than 9000 English works in various formats. All
should be free for personal, noncommercial use. You can:
A
few special exhibits have been prepared in collaboration with the On-Line
Books Page:
- Project Gutenberg - The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make
information, books and other materials available to the general public
in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can
easily read, use, quote, and search. There are three portions
of the Project Gutenberg Library, basically be described as: 1)
Light Literature; such as Alice in Wonderland, Through the
Looking-Glass, Peter Pan, Aesop's Fables, etc. 2) Heavy
Literature; such as the Bible or other religious documents,
Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, etc. 3) References;
such as Roget's Thesaurus, almanacs, and a set of encyclopedia,
dictionaries, etc.
- The Internet Public Library
- The IPL Online Texts Collection contains over 9000 titles that can be
browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Subject Classification. They
can also be searched using the form on-line. You can also browse the
corpus by the following Dewey Categories
Where to Buy Software
The
following addresses might become useful when buying software:
CAMSOFT:
This company produces and retails CALL software and educational software by
mail order and offers consultancy and training services in the area of
language learning and teaching technology.
Wida
Software is a team of former language teachers and computer
designers. They develop and distribute language learning programs throughout
the world. Programs running under Windows and the Macintosh are available by
mail order for English as a foreign language, for French, German, Spanish,
Italian and Russian. Wida
specialises in making authoring programs that enable teachers
to build up libraries of exercises closely geared to the needs of their own
students. We provide a training service in London or wherever the customer
wants it.
Both
Wida Software & Camsoft
offer the MonoConc Concordancing Software
Available concordance software
http://www.rjcw.freeserve.co.uk/
- Concordance, text analysis and concordancing software, is for anyone who
needs to study texts closely or analyse language in depth. This is the most
powerful and flexible software of its kind, with registered users in
forty-four countries.
http://www.dataflight.com/
http://www.orst.edu/Dept/eli/celia/macconc.html
- Concordance program that does word and letter concordances. Not as fancy
as commercial programs, but well worth the price.
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/ucrel/public/1557.html
- Corpora: Announcements: Windows Concordance Software
