LINGUIST List 3.193

Thu 27 Feb 1992

Qs: Machine Readable Corpora, Address

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1. Steve Fligelstone, Machine Readable Language Corpora in Teaching
2. , address

We would like to undertake a preliminary survey of the way in which Machine
Readable Language Corpora are currently being used in teaching, especially,
but not exclusively, in higher education, whether at undergraduate or
postgraduate level, whether as part of Linguistics courses or in some other
context.

We would be as interested in hearing about courses where corpora form a
central focus (courses in corpus linguistics for example!), as in courses
where they are a more 'invisible' resource, e.g. underlying instruction in
language use or grammatical studies. We are likewise interested in any
practical instruction offered in corpus access of various kinds - including
details of software (whether in-house or proprietary) and the kinds of computing
support required by these activities. The main criterion for inclusion is
that the activity can be seen as lying within the domain of 'teaching',
rather than as a strictly research activity.

A short response only is sought at this stage, but in addition to a brief
descripton of the genral aims and methods of the course, we would be grateful
for details about a) length of time course (or similar course) has been running
b) level and experience of students c) failed initiatives in this field as well
as successful ones.

Depending on the response we may choose to progress to a more thorough and
detailed survey. Either way we would hope to publish some results and anlysis
of the enquiry and to summarise some of the findings on linguist. Please write
 to:

Steven Fligelstone and Tony Mcenery
Unit for Computer Research on the English Language
Linguistics Department
Bowland College
Lancaster University LA1 4AD

email: eia002uk.ac.lancaster

Does anyone have an address (e-mail or regular mail) for Russell
Campbell? He wrote an article about using hypnosis to retrieve
language knowledge, and I would like to know more about what he found
out. Please reply directly to me (ejlesbbengfac.indstate.edu).
Thanks, Leslie Barratt