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Liu Making Grammar Instruction More Empowering 353

Research in the Teaching of EnglishVolume 45, Number 4, May 2011 353

Dilin Liu

University of Alabama

Making Grammar Instruction More Empowering: An Exploratory Case

Study of Corpus Use in the Learning/Teaching of Grammar

Despite a long debate and the accompanying call or changes in the past ew decades, grammar

instruction in college English classes, according to some scholars, has remained largely disempow-

ering, decontextualized, and remedial (Micciche, 2004, p. 718). To search or more eective

and empowering grammar teaching, this study explores the use o corpora or problem-based

learning/teaching o lexicogrammar in a college English grammar course. This pedagogy was

motivated by research ndings that (1) corpora are a very useul source and tool or language

research and or active discovery learning o second/oreign languages, and (2) problem-based

learning (PBL) is an eective and motivating instructional approach. The data collected and

analyzed include students individual and group corpus research projects, refection papers oncorpus use, and responses to a post-study survey consisting o both open-ended and Likert ques-

tions. The analysis o the data ound the ollowing our themes in students use o, and refections

about, corpus study: (1) critical understanding about lexicogrammatical and broader language

use issues, (2) awareness o the dynamic nature o language, (3) appreciation or the context/

register-appropriate use o lexicogrammar, and (4) grasping o the nuances o lexicogrammatical

usages. The paper also discusses the challenges involved in incorporating corpus use into English

classes and oers suggestions or urther research.

Despite years of debate, grammar teaching (including questions of whether gram-

mar should be taught, which grammar to teach, and how it should be taught)

has remained a contentious issue, and there has not been much change in the

way grammar is taught in college English classes (Curzan, 2009; Micciche, 2004).

While some have argued for and embraced the teaching of usage-based descrip-

tive grammar and a critical examination of grammar, many instructors still use a

remedial approach focusing on teaching and enforcing prescriptive grammatical

rules in the form ofdonts, such as Dont end sentences with prepositionsand Dontbegin sentences with and/but(Curzan, 2009; Kolln & Gray, 2009; Micciche, 2004).

According to Micciche (2004), current grammar instruction in college writing

classes is in general not empowering but disempowering, not rhetorical but

Copyright 2011 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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354 Research in the Teaching of English Volume 45 May 2011

decontextualized, not progressive but remedial (p. 718). Such disempowering

and remedial teaching o grammar does students more disservice than service. It

not only makes grammar learning passive and uninteresting but also undermines

students ability to develop a clear understanding o context-appropriate use ogrammar. For example, the teaching and the strict enorcement o certain prescrip-

tive grammatical rules, such as the no sentence-initial use oand/but rule, have

caused some students to religiously ollow these rules regardless o context. Such

teaching practices also make students less willing to allow grammatical choices

that, according to Kolln and Gray (2009), are not only available but also necessary

or eective communication. Furthermore, the teaching practice discourages and

stifes the development o critical understanding o grammar and language use in

general, an understanding that some scholars (e.g., Curzan, 2009; Micciche, 2004)

believe college students should possess.

The above discussion about current grammar teaching indicates a clear need

or college English educators involved in grammar instruction to strive or more

appropriate and eective teaching approaches to help students enhance their criti-

cal understanding o context and audience-appropriate use o grammar. In act,

many have pointed out the need and joined the endeavor (Curzan, 2009; Kolln &

Gray, 2009; Micciche, 2004; Pharr & Buscemi, 2005; Weaver, 1996). More eort

is needed, however. To this end, this study aims to explore the use o corpora in

problem-based learning and teaching o grammar in a mainstream1 college Englishgrammar course. The exploration will ocus on (1) students responses to such a

teaching approach and (2) the eects o the approach both on students critical

understanding o context-appropriate use o lexicogrammar and on their appre-

ciation o nuances in lexicogrammatical usages, an area o knowledge essential or

eective and precise communication.

Review of the Literature: Theoretical Framework for the Approach

The ollowing review o the literature on corpus use and on PBL is intended to

provide the theoretical ramework or the proposed pedagogy. It should also help

the reader understand how a pedagogy grounded in such a theoretical ramework

may enable students to learn grammar more actively and meaningully, enhance

their critical understanding o appropriate use o English grammar, and raise their

awareness o the grammar knowledge they already possess but are oten unconscious

o. In other words, the review should indicate how such an approach may help

make grammar instruction more empowering, contextualized, and progressive.

Corpus Use in Language Research and Learning/TeachingA corpus is a collection o linguistic data, spoken and/or written, compiled primarily

or the purpose o research although, in the past decade, corpora have also been

used or language learning/teaching, especially oreign/second-language learning/

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teaching. While most corpus data are composed o natural language, such as real

conversations and newspaper articles, some are not, e.g., movie scripts and language

produced in tests or assessment purposes. Most corpora today are computerized.

Some can be accessed ree online, such as the 400 million-word Corpus o Con-temporary American English (COCA), the 100 million-word Time(magazine)

Corpus, and the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC).2 Computerized

corpora allow instant automatic searching and sorting o enormous amounts o

language data in various manners, making language analysis much easier, aster,

and more valid and reliable than beore. For example, using the method known

as concordancing, one can query a corpus or any lexical items (either a single-

words or a multi-word items) overall requency, its collocation patterns (i.e., with

what other words it typically co-occurs, oten as airly-fxed idiomatic expressions,

e.g., make a decisionbut take a step), and its requency across various registers,

such as academic writing, conversation, and written news, i the corpus consists

o register-specifc3 sub-corpora.A concordancing search typically generates and

displays on the computer screen not only the total requency number but also the

tokens4 o the linguistic item being queried in a list o lines as shown in Figure

1, which displays part o the result o the query or the phrase back on track in

the Timecorpus.

The researcher or the teacher/student doing the search can read the concor-

dance lines to examine the immediate linguistic context o the item being queried togain a better understanding o its meaning and usage patterns. With many corpora,

one can access even more extended context o the linguistic item via additional

searches, e.g., here in the Timecorpus, as well as COCA and the BNC, one can

simply click the concordance line number/title to access more extended context

including inormation about the source o the text. In some corpora, one can even

access the entire text in which the queried item appears, including the name o

the author/ speaker o the text and the time and place where it was published or

spoken. Thus, corpora may enable us to study language use in context although,as already stated, the extent o the context available may vary rom corpus to

corpus. In some cases, contextual inormation regarding audience, purpose, and

intertextual relationships is unavailable. It is also important to note that some

corpora contain language data rom dierent historical periods and, as such, they

are excellent sources or diachronic studies o language use. For example, the Time

corpus contains all o the magazines publications since 1923. With data spanning

over almost 90 years, it constitutes a good source or studying historical changes

in American English, specifcally in written American media English.

Thanks to their advanced capabilities, corpora have become a very useul

source or language research and the learning and teaching o second or oreign

languages, especially English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL). In terms

o research, many linguists and applied linguists have taken advantage o the various

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Figure1.

Queryresultsforbackontrackinth

eTimeCorpus

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unique functions of corpora and produced valuable new understandings about

language with some of them challenging existing English language descriptions

(Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Carter & McCarthy, 2006;

Hunston & Francis, 2000). Biber et al.s (1999) and Carter and McCarthys (2006)comprehensive corpus-based English grammar books are representative works

in this regard.

A very important contribution of corpus-based language research is that it

has provided evidence for the theory of lexicogrammar. As part of the systemic

functional theory of language advanced by Halliday (1994), lexicogrammar treats

lexis and grammar as two inherently connected parts of one entity, challenging

the traditional wisdom of postulating separate domains of lexis and syntax

(Sinclair, 1991, p. 104). In this view, a grammatical structure may be lexically

restricted (Francis, 1993, p. 142) and, conversely, lexical items are often gram-

matical in nature, for the use of a lexical item often has grammatical implications

(Conrad, 2000; Hunston & Francis, 2000). Different words often have unique

patterns or rules in collocation (e.g., in the meaning of caretaking/educating a

child/children, raise/rear a child/childrentypically collocatebut *lift/elevate a child/

childrendo not), colligation (the grammatical environment or structures in which

a word typically appears, e.g., of the synonyms astonishing/shocking/surprising,

onlysurprisingoften appears in the negative structure Its not surprising), and

semantics/pragmatics (the typical semantic/pragmatic implications/meanings aword carries, e.g., of the synonyms actually/really/truly, onlyactuallyis often used

to imply a contradiction or correction of what has been stated or believed to be,

as can be seen in the statement He actually did it, which implies a contradiction

to the belief or statement He did not do it); every word has its own grammar

in these respects (Aston, 2001; Sinclair, 1991). Lexicogrammar, thus, covers not

only traditional grammatical topics such as syntax and morphology (i.e., sentence

and word formation rules) but also important lexical usage issues not considered

within the purview of grammar traditionally. These lexical usage issues are im-portant because they deal with one of the most fundamental aspects of language

structure and usage: how words are actually used and patterned to convey mean-

ing. It is important to note that this study adopted the concept of lexicogrammar

and, therefore, the topics covered in the grammar course in this study included

the aforementioned lexical issues.

With regard to corpus use in language teaching, many studies have shown that

corpora can make ESL learning and teaching more interesting and effective (Aston,

2001; Conrad, 2000; Francis, 1993; Liu & Jiang, 2009; OKeeffe, McCarthy, & Carter,

2007; Sinclair, 2004; Sun & Wang, 2003; Yoon & Hirvela, 2004). Classroom research

has indicated that corpus use is especially helpful for learning lexicogrammatical

usage rules and patterns. Via concordancing searches, language learners can obtain,

observe, and analyze useful language data about the lexicogrammatical items they

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are interested in and then discover and generalize these items usage rules and

patterns. Such corpus-based learning is very eective because it engages learners

in active discovery learning (Aston, 2001, p. 19). Furthermore, corpora are also

very helpul or second-language students to learn register dierence in the useo lexicogrammar, i.e., context-based variations in lexicogrammar use (Hunston,

2002; Liu & Jiang, 2009).

Given the aorementioned valuable uses o corpora ound in second-language

learning/ teaching, it is rather surprising and unortunate that there has not been

much research about corpus use in mainstream English classes. I have ound only

three publications on such corpus use (McEnery, Wilson, & Barker, 1997; Sealey

& Thompson, 2004, 2007) and they all deal with elementary and secondary school

mainstream English classes in Britain. Furthermore, o the three studies, only the

two by Sealey and Thompson were empirical, and they ocused on the use o cor-

pora to raise elementary school students metalinguistic knowledge, such as the

knowledge o the parts o speech. McEnery et al. (1997) discussed how corpora

might be used to enhance mainstream English education in secondary schools.

Thus, it is clear that more research on corpus use in mainstream English classes,

especially at the college level, is needed, considering especially (1) the potential o

corpus use to help determine what specifc context-appropriate lexicogrammatical

rules are and to promote active and discovery learning, and (2) the need, accord-

ing to some scholars (Curzan, 2009; Micciche, 2004), to make grammar teachingmore empowering, contextualized, and progressive, and to promote critical un-

derstanding o grammar. The discovery learning potential o corpora is especially

important because active discovery learning has been a key component o many

contemporary learning theories and approaches, including PBL, the approach

which helps orm the theoretical base or the present study.

PBL

Defned broadly, PBL is an instructional (and curricular) learner-centered ap-

proach that empowers learners to conduct research, integrate theory and practice,

and apply knowledge and skills to develop a viable solution to a defned problem

(Savery, 2006, p. 9).While it can be traced to John Dewey in theory, PBL was frst

used thirty years ago as an instructional approach in teaching medical students

at McMaster University in Canada (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). It has since been

employed successully, however, in teaching various subjects and at all levels o

school rom elementary to tertiary (Duch, Groh, & Allen, 2001; Hmelo-Silver,

2004; Torp & Sage, 2002). The underlying theory o this approach is that learning

is most eectively initiated and acilitated by posing and solving real-lie problemsthat interest the learner because working on such problems makes learning mean-

ingul and motivates learners. The major characteristics o PBL are: (1) the use

o complex or ill-structured real-lie problems or students to research, (2) the

acilitating role, rather than the traditional instructional role, that the instructor

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plays, (3) the sel-directing and sel-regulating that the students exercise in their

learning, and (4) the close collaboration the students do in groups in the problem-

solving process (Duch, Groh, & Allen, 2001; Hmelo-Silver, 2004; Savery, 2006).

The unique eatures o PBL make it especially appropriate or college teachingbecause, according to Duch, Groh, & Allen (2001, p. 6), the approach addresses

directly many o the recommended and desirable outcomes o an undergraduate

education, including development o critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.

I we recall the unique values o corpora in language study discussed above

and consider the characteristics o PBL, it appears that corpora may be ideal or

problem-based learning/teaching o grammar. As research has shown, corpora

can provide students with many active discovery learning opportunities to explore

lexicogrammatical issues. Furthermore, lexicogrammatical problems, especially

those related to what constitute context-appropriate lexicogrammatical rules, are

oten messy or ill-structured and hence excellent or PBL. For example, where

and when to use the passive voice is not a very simple question. Nor is it an easy

question whether and when certain collective nouns, e.g.,juryand team, should be

treated as singular or plural. For these difcult questions, corpora are arguably the

best place or students to fnd possible answers, not just because corpora contain

useul inormation or answering these questions but also, and more importantly,

because the process o searching or the answers in corpora is complex and chal-

lenging, a condition crucial or PBL. Furthermore, by having students do corpusresearch about lexicogrammar, we are not only involving them in active discovery

learning but also telling them they are language experts. English instructors should

help students capitalize on this knowledge by making it conscious through active,

discovery learning (Kolln & Gray, 2009).

Methodology

ParticipantsThe participants were 41 students in two sections (section A with 18 and section

B with 23 students) o an English grammar and usage course at a large public

university in the Southeast o the U.S. The two sections were not rom the same

semester (as only one section o the course was oered each year) and were taught

by two dierent instructors, with the author being one o them. The course was

designed to help students gain an advanced understanding o English grammar

and usage. It was a cross-listed course with both graduate and undergraduate stu-

dents. Although it was open to all upper class undergraduate students and graduate

students, the course was taken primarily by students majoring in English, com-munication studies, and education. O the 41 students in the two classes, 23 were

junior or senior English majors, 7 seniors in other majors such as communication

studies, journalism, and anthropology, and 11 graduate students pursuing a degree

in language teaching or communication studies.

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Corpora UsedThe major corpora used in the course were the three ree online corpora mentioned

in the review o corpus use section above: the BNC, COCA, and the Timecorpus.

In addition, the students were told they could also use the ollowing three onlinecorpora: (1) the ree Michigan Corpus o Academic Spoken English (MICASE),

(2) Google or the Webcorp (a ree web search engine that allows a person to search

all the Internet sources/data or inormation needed, i.e., it treats the entire World

Wide Web as a corpus), and (3) the online Oxford English Dictionary, which the

students could access because o the university librarys subscription to it. The reason

or using the online OEDas a corpus was that it contains 2.2 million searchable

quotations (37 million words) o naturally occurring language, which, as research

has indicated, can serve as a good and quite reliable corpus o English or studying

the evolution o English lexicogrammatical items (Homann, 2004).The online

accessibility o all the corpora made it possible or students to conduct corpus

research at any time and location convenient or them as long as a computer with

Internet access was available.

Study Design and ProceduresGiven the exploratory nature o the questions in this study, a case study approach

was adopted as the research method as it would allow the use o a variety o quali-

tative data or detailed in-depth analysis on the issues being explored. Regardingthe procedures o the study,5in the frst ew weeks o the course, the students were

introduced to the aorementioned corpora, including how to use them to conduct

various queries, and instructed in the use o queries to extract dierent types o

language usage inormation. Sample corpus research questions, such as to what

extent the prescriptive rule that the structure none o with a plural noun phrase

must be used with a singular verb orm (e.g. None o the students was injured)

was actually ollowed, were given so the students were able to practice corpus query

methods in answering real grammar usage questions.

For their individual corpus projects, the students needed to work on a lexico-

grammatical problem that they had questions about and were interested in and to

write a report about the project. Immediately ater the students completed their

individual corpus research project, they were organized into groups o three or

our to embark on a larger corpus research project, which could be complemented

by another empirical study, such as a survey, i deemed necessary or helpul. In

both the individual and group projects, the students selected their own research

questions and decided how to search or the answers. The instructor served only

as a tutor or acilitator, the typical role in PBL. Specifcally, the instructor providedsome technical advice and assistance about corpus searches and the easibility

o research topics; e.g., or some lexicogrammatical problems, such as regional

or age-related usage variations, the corpora used in the study would not be able

to provide answers because the data were not tagged to allow searches or such

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inormation. The inclusion o the group project was motivated by the PBL theory

that collaboration is crucial in students learning. Furthermore, corpus research

oten calls or a close examination o tokens manually to decide whether they are

relevant6

and/or what they mean but one persons judgment sometimes may notbe reliable or correct. Discussion among group members can oten enhance the

reliability and accuracy o such decisions. In addition, corpus research can be very

time-consuming, especially when the project requires manual scrutiny o tokens.

Sharing the work among group members makes the task more manageable. As

part o the group research project assignment, each group had to write a paper

about their research including fndings and present it to the class.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data used in this study include the ollowing: (1) the individual corpus researchproject, (2) the group corpus research project together with a peer evaluation orm

flled out by each group member about the other group members perormances,

(3) a reection paper about corpus use and the course, and (4) a survey composed

o an open-ended question section and a Likert question section (see Appendix or

the survey). The survey was given on the last day o class but not all the students

completed and returned it. The peer evaluations were collected when the students

turned in their group research papers. The students all produced and submitted,

or grading, an individual corpus research paper and a group paper (one or eachgroup) as part o the course requirements. Yet based on the consent orm they had

signed, the students had the option o stopping participation at any time during

the study i they chose to, including not submitting their papers as data; to honor

this agreement, all the research papers were returned to the students ater having

been graded and the students were then asked to resubmit their papers as well

as a reection essay in electronic orm as data or the study. Unortunately, as in

the case o the survey, not all students submitted their papers and/or a reection

essay. It is not entirely clear, though, whether their noncompliance was a result

o a conscious decision to stop participating in the study or some other reasons

such as simply being too busy. The number o items collected as data by category

was as ollows: 31 research papers (21 o 41 individual papers and 10 o 13 group

projects), with 13 o them coming rom section A and 18 rom section B; 38 peer

evaluations or the group project, with 17 rom section A and 21 rom section B;

15 reection papers with 6 rom section A and 9 rom section B; and 27 surveys,

with 11 rom section A and 16 rom section B. The consistently higher numbers

o submissions rom Section B are likely the result o the larger size o the section

(23 vs. 18 in section A).Except or a tabulation o the students answers to the Likert questions, the

data analysis involved essentially an interpretive scrutiny o all the qualitative data,

employing a two-step method commonly used in qualitative data analysis in social

science/education research to identiy themes: (1) an ocular scan, also known as

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pawing, and (2) cutting and sorting o the data (Bernard, 2000; Ryan & Ber-

nard, 2003). Specifcally, in the pawing stage, I read multiple times through the

data, including the students research papers, reection essays, and their responses

to the open-ended survey questions, and I marked up (i.e., highlighted) sectionsthat seemed interesting or important. Then during the cutting and sorting phase,

I perused the texts again, especially the marked sections, identifed quotes or ex-

pressions that appeared important to the research questions and then arranged the

quotes thematically. The labels or common themes (e.g., critical understanding

o lexicogrammatical usage issues, appreciation or the context/register appropri-

ate use o lexicogrammar, and difculties and challenges in corpus searches and

corpus data analysis) emerged as I identifed reoccurring issues and reected on

the relationship between quotes rom the data and topics relevant and important

to the research questions. For example, many students discussed how some tra-

ditional or prescriptive grammatical rules were not ollowed in the corpus data

and how the fndings led them to question the validity o such rules. As I grouped

these discussions, I concluded that the label critical understanding o lexicogram-

matical usage issues captured the linked themes o attention to grammar, more

precisely lexicogrammatical usage, and students emerging critical stance toward

usage rules, their critical understanding. It is important to note that, in this two-

step analysis process, I identifed and recorded not just the positive but also all the

negative responses about corpus use and about the course in general.The data rom the two sections were combined or analysis and reporting or

two reasons. First, despite the act that the two sections were taught by dierent

instructors, the content and objectives were the same or both sections. Also, the

author was responsible or the corpus research component or both sections,

including teaching the use o corpora and answering technical questions about

corpus use. In this sense, the author was in charge o perhaps the most important

part o the study in both sections. Furthermore, acting primarily as a acilitator,

the instructors role in this approach was quite limited. Second and more impor-tantly, as a case study, the data used were almost exclusively qualitative and the data

analysis, as just stated, was undamentally a descriptive synthesis o the students

response to and the eects o the corpus use; thus, a comparison between the two

sections in this type o data analysis is perhaps neither especially meaningul nor

easy. Nevertheless, the author is aware o the potential problems o the combined

data analysis, such as the possibility o missing some important dierences between

the two sections caused by, among other things, instructor dierence.

Results and Discussion

This section is organized as ollows. It begins with a description o the students

general responses to the use o corpora in the classes based on the results o the

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Likert survey questions and some qualitative data. Then it is ollowed by a detailed

discussion o the results rom the qualitative data. To avoid unnecessary repetition,

the discussion will integrate the dierent types o qualitative data (i.e., research

papers, reection essays, and answers to open-ended survey questions) and willbe organized according to the main themes identifed. Thesection ends with a

discussion o the challenges o corpus use.

General Responses to Use of Corpora in the ClassesThe results o the Likert scale questions (summarized in Table 1) show that the

majority o the students responded positively or very positively to the questions.

Specifcally, 70% or more o the 27 students who returned the survey ound the

use o corpus quite helpul or very helpul (Question 1), believed they had learned

a good amount or a great deal (Question 2), planned to use corpora in the uture(Question 3), and considered context more or much more important in language

use than beore the study (Question 4). O course, it is also important to note

that two students ound corpus use to be minimally useul and believed they had

learned minimally rom corpus research. Furthermore, eight students (nearly 30%)

expressed some degree o skepticism about uture use o corpora.

Rating 1 2 3 4 5

Question 1 onhelpulness o

corpus use

Not at All0 (0%)

Minimally2 (7.4%)

Somewhat6 (22.2%)

Quite12 (44.4%)

Very7 (25.9%)

Question 2

on amount olearning rom

corpus use

Nothing0 (0%)

Minimal2 (7.7%)

A little6 (22.2%)

A goodamount

13(48.1%)

A greatdeal

6 (22.2%)

Question 3on plan to usecorpora in the

uture

No1 (3.7%)

Probablynot

1 (3.7%)

Not sure6 (22.2%)

Yes13 (48.1%)

Yes, verymuch

6 (22.2)

Question 4 onimportance o

context comparedto previous belie

Not asimportant

0 (0%)

Not quite asimportant

0 (0%)

About thesame

7 (25.9%)

Moreimportant12 (44.4%)

Much moreimportant8 (29.6%)

TabLe 1:

Summary of Students Responses to Likert Scale Questions

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Because the question did not ask the students why they answered the way they

did and because it was not easible to conduct a ollow-up interview, we can only

speculate about the likely reasons or their decision not to use corpora or their

uncertainty about the issue, based on the students responses to the open-endedquestion about the challenges in using corpora (Question 6). To avoid repetition,

I will explore the reasons below in the section on challenges.

Like their responses to the Likert survey questions, the students direct and

indirect responses to corpus use in the qualitative data were generally positive,

although some students did mention, mostly in answers to the survey questions

about the challenges in using corpora, concerns and difculties they had with

corpus research. Again, to avoid repetition, the concerns and difculties will

be discussed in the section on challenges below. A ew examples o students

positive qualitative assessment o the use o corpora are provided here to oer a

glimpse o students general responses. The frst example comes rom a students

reection paper:

Being a new English graduate student. . ., it was difcult or me to comprehend the

idea o a corpus, much less how to use one. I never knew such a tool existed or the sake

o academic research and have since ound mysel both troubled and amazed at the

power o the research capabilities. Because o this type o research involving a corpus, I

recognize now that I am a prescriptivist grammarian who accepted rules as rules simply

because they were taught in such a way. Perhaps these rules even fltered over into my

chosen feld o studyjournalismbecause even in the case o the AP Stylebook, I

have ailed to question word usage or usage in practice. I simply accepted rules as rules.

The course itsel as well as the use o the corpus has orced me outside o my fgurative

prescriptivist boundaries and into an uncharted word-flled territory.

The tool itsel is incredibly valuable to the study o linguistics and the English language

in general. I the course does nothing but encourage students to play with it, explore it,

and be aware o it, it has accomplished a goal. It is certainly a acet o the structure o

English that I was unaware o and eel as i I am a better student and uture educator

because o my newound knowledge o it.

The students comments suggest that she ound corpora to be a very useul re-

source or tool or English study. Such an appreciation o corpora as a useul tool

or research on lexicogrammatical usages can also be ound in the ollowing state-

ment made by a student who conducted a corpus study on the issue o the use o

sentence-fnal prepositions: By using the British National Corpus and spending

about two minutes doing light research with Google, my question about ending

sentences with prepositions was answered in greater detail than I could have everreceived using any one textbook or proessor.

Some students appeared to appreciate particularly or mostly the value o corpus

use in helping bring their implicit language knowledge to a conscious level. For

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example, in answering survey question 1 about what he or she had learned rom

corpus research, a student wrote:

Not so much learning as bringing to my attention. Strange word combinations and

usage patterns have been interesting to take note o because up until this point I have

never had reason to give it much thought.

In this students view, what the corpus research in the course accomplished or him

or her was not so much learning as bringing to my [his or her] attention language

use issues he or she had never thought about. Bringing students lexicogrammati-

cal knowledge to consciousness has been identifed as a crucial task or successul

grammar teaching (Kolln & Gray, 2009). Corpus use appeared to be helpul in this

regard. In addition to the above students comment, the ollowing statement byanother student in response to the same survey question also supports the point:

As a result [o the corpus research fndings], I have begun to notice in my everyday lie

how people choose to use grammar, whether it be trendy or scholarly (underline added).

The phrase begun to notice suggests that it was only ater his or her corpus

research that the student began to become aware o the language issues he or she

now notices.

Findings from the Qualitative Data by ThemesBeore I embark on the fndings rom the qualitative data, a brie discussion about

the topics o the students corpus projects is necessary. As stated earlier, both the

individual and group corpus research assignments asked the students to work on

a topic they had questions about and were interested in. The topics o their project

ell into two major categories: (1) issues involving grammatical rules and usages

which are a matter o debate and (2) changes o lexicogrammatical usages and mean-

ings. O course, some addressed both issues. O the total 31 projects the students

turned in, 22 were primarily o the frst type, covering topics such as the use o

split-infnitives, the issue o whether the none o [plural noun/pronoun]subject

should be ollowed by a singular or plural verb, and the use o sentence-initial con-

junctions like and and but. The reason many o the students chose grammatical

issues o debate was that typically these issues involved rules that the students had

learned in school but were not always ollowed in actual language use. The nine

projects that covered chiey language change issues dealt with topics such as the

requency and use patterns o whom over the past century, neologisms in the 21st

century, and the increasing use o like as a multi-unctional word in contemporaryEnglish. Again, it is necessary to note that some o the projects on grammatical/

usage issues o debate also involved a certain amount o diachronic analysis (i.e.,

whether the usage o the item in question had changed over time). Analysis o

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the qualitative data ound our themes in students use o, and reections about,

corpus study in these classes: (1) critical understanding about lexicogrammatical

and broader language use issues, (2) awareness o the dynamic nature o language,

(3) appreciation or the context/register-appropriate use o lexicogrammar, and(4) grasping o the nuances o lexicogrammatical usages.

Critical Understanding about Lexicogrammatical and Broader LanguageUse IssuesOne example showing students critical examination o lexicogrammatical use issues

is ound in a group research project that investigated the prescriptive grammati-

cal rule, Do not use conjunctions and/butsentential initially. The group wanted

to determine to what extent this rule was actually ollowed. They searched or

sentence initial uses o the two wordsin the Timecorpus and the results revealedthat such use was steady rom the 1920s through 1960s but showed a noticeable

decline in the late 1960s and the 1970s and then a steady and sharp increase rom

the 1980s. To fnd out what might have been the reason or the short-lived decline,

the students examined various sources and learned that sentence initial use oand/

buthad actually been common since the 9th century and was not questioned until

the 19th century when some prescriptive grammarians such as G. P. Quackenbos

decided it was not acceptable (Burchfeld, 1996; Rodgers, 1966). Despite the new

rule, sentence initial use o the two conjunctions has continued to be widespreadexcept or that short-term decline due to a strong, but short-lived, push by pre-

scriptive grammarians and school teachers to enorce the prescriptive rule. Based

on their research fndings, many o the group members appeared to have recog-

nized the ailings o prescriptive grammar and embraced a descriptive approach

to grammar, a conclusion that may be gleaned rom the ollowing group project

summary statement about their fndings:

While prescriptive grammarians may lament the act that conjunctions are being used

improperly, descriptive grammarians can easily recognize the linguistic trends thatare leading to a grammar shit metamorphosing the conjunctions butand and into

linking adverbials.

In another example indicating critical understanding o grammar, one student

who had been taught and had become a staunch ollower o the rule that a comma

has to be used ater a sentence-initial transitional or linking adverb (e.g., therefore

and thus) decided to do a corpus study on the issue ater she noticed some o her

riends did not ollow the rule. She believed they were wrong. However, to her

surprise, her research o the Humanity/Arts section o the Academic Writing

register o the BNC yielded a slightly higher number o tokens with no comma

ater the linking adverbs so used. (She chose the Humanities/Arts section because

she was an English major.) As a result, she concluded, I discovered that my use o

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the comma ater therefore, thus, and henceis not common. The data proves that

more oten it is used without the comma, but the data also proves that the issue

is debatable. Yet the surprise was so strong that she wrote: Now, my view o the

no-exceptions grammar world is slowly splitting into non-coherent hemispheres.These comments seem to suggest that the corpus study made her question long-

held rigid views about grammar. A similar eect may be seen in a student who did

a corpus study about whether it was acceptable to say raisea child/children. The

reason he did the study was that his high school English teacher taught him not

to say raisea childbecause, in the teachers axiom, You raise a window, but you

rear a child. The results o his search o the BNC, COCA, and the Timecorpus

showed that raisehas been used more oten than rearsince the 1920s.In act, rear

is used in this sense mostly in ormal writing. More importantly, according to his

search, bring upis actually the most requently used verb orm in expressing the

idea. Based on the fndings, the student concluded: From the data, it [rear] appears

to have never been the dominant use in any context or time period. . . the data begs

the question o where the axiom that I along with others were taught originated.

From what it appears, it was not more than an arbitrary line in the sand drawn to

solve a synonymous verb question.

One more example on this issue comes rom the student who conducted a

corpus research regarding the rule o Not ending sentences with a preposition

mentioned earlier. The student ound many tokens o preposition-ending sentencesand did not fnd any instances o sentences that were awkwardly constructed to

avoid a sentence-ending preposition. The ollowing is the students conclusion

about the research project:

My biggest surprise o the project was that I did not fnd any overly complicated sen-

tence rearrangements written to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. As much

as I heard rom others that ending a sentence with a preposition was rowned upon, I

very much expected to fnd some truly absurd-sounding sentences to avoid doing so,

but I did not. For example, there is a scene in the movie Beavis & Butt-head Do America(please excuse the example) where an FBI agent says Isnt that the trailer they commit-

ted the crime in? His superior chastises him or ending a sentence in a preposition. The

agent attempts to rearrange his sentence, and we see him in the background struggling

with the sentence, mumbling, Um, is in this trailer which the crimenoin which

the crime this trailer As much un as it would have been to point out how silly it is

that we would go to such lengths to avoid doing something that is technically not even

incorrect, it was rereshing and reassuring when the corpus revealed that speakers o

English have actually let this aspect o the language relatively uncomplicated.

These our examples illustrate the potential o corpus research to enhance students

critical understanding not only o lexicogrammatical usage issues, but o the di-

erence between prescriptive rules and descriptive accounts o language.

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Critical understanding o lexicogrammar also fgures as a prominent theme

in the students answers to the open-ended survey questions. For example, in an-

swering question 1 about what they learned rom their corpus research, 16 out o

27 students wrote that they ound some established grammatical rules were otennot ollowed in actual language use. One student wrote, Even in written English,

people oten choose not to abide by perceived prescriptive rules. Similarly, in

responding to Question 4 regarding their views about prescriptive grammar based

on their corpus research fndings, most o the students (23 out o 25) who answered

the question stated that the fndings did not support the traditional rigid view o

grammar. The ollowing quote rom a students answer to the question is a good

representation o their responses in general:

No, traditional grammar clearly ailed to represent the dynamics and uid nature olanguage. While I believe grammar courses should be a more common fxture in English

education, prescriptive grammar is limited in its relevance, especially to spoken English

(it is ar more relevant to ormal, written English, though). [Parenthetical comment is

the students own.]

Awareness of the Dynamic Nature of Language UseOne example o awareness o the dynamic nature o language use comes rom a

student who had loved to use the word neat to mean interesting/un/good, but

oten ound her interlocutors were conused as they were not amiliar with this use

o the word. The problem led her to a study o the use o the word in the OEDand

the Timecorpus. She was able to trace the development o the words new mean-

ing (the one she had been using) rom its original meaning o clean/organized

and to diagram the development o the new meaning. Interestingly, her research

also showed a decline o the new use o the word in recent years, prompting her to

conclude: Finally, this use o neat has begun to decrease so that it may one day

become obsolete. For the uture, it might be predicted that neat will revert back

to its original ormal uses, as new trends o language are assumed. . . . Similarly,another student who traced the development o the dierent usages and meanings

o like in the OED, the Timecorpus and COCA wrote:

I did not expect to orm so many opinions on the word like; or see this simple word and

its attachments to other words orm common phrases. This word has so many diversi-

ties, it is amazing. By diversity, I mean its capability to orm so many expressions and

dierent meanings. This one word that began as a common simile fltered itsel into the

American language as a space fller in our language and used in numerous ways, that

were once seen as poor grammar and now go virtually unnoticed.

It is worth noticing that some students tried to tie the usage change they

examined to specifc sociopolitical reasons. One student traced the change o re

to er (in words such as theatre/theaterand centre/center) in American English by

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querying the Timecorpus. Her research revealed that beore the 1940s, the Brit-

ish spelling re was used almost exclusively in Timemagazine but since the early

1940s, April 7, 1941 to be exact, the American spelling er basically replaced re

in the magazine. (There were still some uses o re ater that date but her researchshowed that almost all o them were proper noun uses.) The student tried very

hard to determine the reason or this sudden change. She noticed that back in

1806 Daniel Webster in his frst Webster dictionary had already created the new

er spelling but it was not ollowed in Timeuntil 1941. Taking into consideration

this was during World War II, the student hypothesized that the change could be

a move to show American pride and patriotism.

It seems that these students corpus research enabled them to see how lexi-

cogrammatical usages and meanings are not fxed but dynamic, changing over

time and geographical regions and even rom individual to individual. In act, 18

students in their responses to survey questions 1 and 2 mentioned how corpus

analysis helped them understand diachronic and synchronic variations in lexico-

grammar. One student wrote, I also learned that language evolves and changes in

spite o grammatical rules, as shown in the case o the use o conjunctions at the

beginning o a sentence. Similarly, another stated, It [corpus research] also gives

historical/cultural insight rom the decade breakdown [reerring to the decade

breakdown o data that the Timecorpus is capable o exhibiting].

Interestingly, corpus research appears to have not only helped students be-come aware o dynamic changes and innovation in language use but also helped

some students understand the systematic nature o language. A groups research

project on English neologisms demonstrates this point. The students conducted

a Webcorp search (as the Internet is believed to be a major new source o neolo-

gisms) o 30 recent neologisms (i.e., recently accepted into dictionaries) and 15

pending ones (i.e., not yet accepted into dictionaries). Their fndings confrmed

that successul neologisms generally ollow established word ormation rules, such

as blending, compounding, acronymy, borrowing, and eponymy, and can standthe test o public acceptance and time. In other words, the research project allowed

the group to see a blend o innovation and systematic use in the development o

English lexicogrammar.

Appreciation of the Context/Register-Appropriate Use of LexicogrammarOne example showing students appreciation o the context/register-appropriate

use o lexicogrammar comes rom a student who examined the issue o verb

agreement with the none o [plural noun/pronoun] subject. The prescriptive

grammatical rule is that the verb should be in the singular orm because noneindicates singular. The students query o the BNC corpus showed that, in the spoken

register, 78.9% o the relevant tokens used the plural verb orm and only 21.1%

used the singular orm; in contrast, the opposite pattern was ound in academic

writing with 72.7% using the singular verb orm and 27.3% the plural orm. The

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fndings led the student to conclude that in academic felds people tend to ollow

the prescriptive grammatical rules whereas in spoken English people would not do

so most o the time. In act, most o the students projects examined cross-register

dierences concerning the lexicogrammatical issue they investigated, and manycommented on register variations. For example, one student scrutinized the usage

patterns (especially requencies in dierent registers) otype ofvs. sort ofin COCA

and ound that the contexts in which the two were used diered noticeably, thus

concluding: So type ofseems like the better choice in a business or economic feld o

discourse, and sort ofis more oten applied to relationships, behaviors, and people.

The students understanding o the context/register-appropriate use o lexico-

grammar may also be seen in the students answers to the open-ended survey ques-

tions. For example, in answering survey question 1 about what they had learned,

11out o 27 stated that they had learned noticeable dierences in lexicogrammatical

usage across registers and varieties o English. Some o these students (4) went

on to say that they also ound such variations, including some that appeared to

violate traditional rules, were oten necessary or eective communication. For

example, a student who conducted a study o the use o split infnitives came to

the conclusion that split infnitives were oten an eective means to provide the

necessary emphasis one wanted to convey (e.g., tofullyunderstand. . .). Also in

responding to question 2 regarding the areas o corpus use that were most help-

ul, 10 o the 27 students stated they ound corpora especially useul or exploringlexicogrammatical usage patterns across registers, such as certain transitional words

and structures being used mostly in news media.

Most noticeably, on question 3 concerning the role o context in language

use, all the students responses were centered around the crucial role o context

in determining the lexicogrammatical choices people make. Many students used

strong intensifers or special expressions to emphasize the importance o context.

One student stated, Context is king and another claimed that Context is every-

thing. One student specifcally mentioned that the use o corpora had helped himor her better appreciate the role o context: I knew that context was important to

lexicogrammatical choices, but corpus work has helped me gain a better under-

standing o the way context probabilistically aects choice.

Grasping of the Nuances of Lexicogrammatical Usage PatternsThe data indicated that corpus analysis might help students grasp the nuances o

lexicogrammatical usage patterns. For example, a student studied the use o the

tautological expression actual act in COCA. While the general research fnding

was that it is a usage speakers employ or emphasis, his close reading o the corpusexamples ound a semantic dierence between the use o the actual act and an

actual act, a point he explained as ollows:

Accompanied with an indefnite article, the phrase seems to be much less valid and

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compelling. For example, in fctional work, Peeling, a character states, Dont want you

thinking that way. But it might be an actual act (COCA). The use o an actual act is

accompanied in this sentence with might, which specifes some sense o uncertainty. On

the other hand, a report rom NPR exclaims, But the actual act o working outside, o

being outside in incredible cold and in incredible heat, I just ound incredibly exhausting

and draining. (COCA). This particular example o the actual act as opposed to an

actual act oers a much more compelling argument to the audience.

As another example, a group o students examined the BNC and the Timecorpus

about semantic dierences between prepositions at, in, and on, especially the

prepositions uses in idiomatic expressions such as in love and at peace. Based

on their fnding that at peace is typically used to describe an emotional state

in fction, they theorized the rationale or the use o at in the phrase this way:

Peace clearly is not a point in space as the grammar books teach, but i we also look at

this fguratively we can determine why the preposition at is used with this noun. I

a person is at peace it generally means they had to go through times o unrest to get

there. At peace usually comes ater times o turmoil. I this is the case, peace is a sort

o destination, and destination is something at which we arrive.

These examples demonstrate the students working to tease out the nuances o

language via corpus data analysis.In responding to survey question 2 about the areas where they ound corpus

use most helpul, 15 o the 27 students also expressed their appreciation o the

useulness o corpora in helping them identiy nuances in lexicogrammatical usage

patterns. One student wrote, It [corpus use] really allows me to identiy patterns o

usage I never would have identifed otherwise. Another student said that corpora

are designed to give us this type o inormation [nuances in usage patterns] and

does a brilliant job in providing it. The understanding o lexicogrammar that the

students appeared to have gained is perhaps best shown in the ollowing comment

a student made in the reection essay regarding the problem o using corpora in

examining less requently used lexicogrammatical items: Usages and meanings

that are more rarely used but nevertheless commonly acceptable are harder to fnd

in the wash o more common tokens, so it might provide a alse understanding

o specifc usages. The act that students were thinking about such important is-

sues suggests that corpus use in this course might have helped increase students

critical-thinking and problem-solving skills around, and overall understanding

o, language usage issues.

Finally, to end the discussion o the fndings in the our themes, it is neces-sary to note the students learning shown in the above examples appeared to come

mainly rom the process o solving the problems they investigated in their corpus

research projects, a act that may point to the value o corpus use in PBL-based

grammar learning.

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ChallengesThe discussion in this section is based primarily on the students responses to the

open-ended questions on the survey, especially question 6 that asked them specif-

cally about the challenges they aced. Relevant comments rom students reectionessays will also be used. The students responses to question 6 appear to converge

on two issues. The frst concerns the difculty involved in data analysis, including

determining what query tokens were relevant and knowing how to interpret the

results and identiy usage rules. As one student wrote, the greatest challenge or

him was fltering through the concordance lines and fnding meaningul data. A

total o 23 students made comments on this challenge. Ten o these students also

mentioned that the enormous amount o inormation that corpus queries oten

generate adds urther to their difculty in data screening and analysis. Another

challenge, mentioned by 17 students, was that they did not quite know which

query method or methods were most useul or appropriate or fnding answers

to their research questions. These challenges in corpus use might have been the

main reasons or the negative or not so positive responses to some o the Likert

questions mentioned earlier. Students who experienced great difculty in their

corpus research were perhaps likely to eel that corpus use was not helpul and/or

they learned little in corpus research.

The typical challenge the students experienced can perhaps be best seen in the

ollowing account described in the reection paper written by the student whoconducted her corpus research on the issue o whether a comma should be used

ater a sentence-initial linking adverb in the BNC:

From the beginning, I thought this topic would be quite tedious because it would involve

a lot o counting, but I did not realize how tiring it would be. Ater navigating the corpus

in a ew dierent manners, I could not discover a way to make my search limited to only

those sentences that started with therefore. When I did a search, every use o therefore

would come up no matter where it was placed in the sentence.

Out o curiosity, I did not limit my frst search but simply chose Ignore on botho the registers. Just as I suspected, there were too many hits to use or quick research.

Since the 22,983 hits were overwhelming, I decided to search under the Academic

heading. While this search only had 8494 hits, the numbers still intimidated me, so I

fnally decided to research under the Humanities and Arts heading. Since most o my

prooreading involves papers that are written or English classes, this search actually

turned out to be the most useul.

While the students description highlights the difculties students can experience

in corpus research, her fnal resolution ater some time-consuming explorationsalso demonstrates that i students devote the time and are persistent, they can

devise workable solutions. This act may urther indicate the potential o corpus

use mixed with PBL-based learning. A related issue mentioned by nine students

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in the survey was that there were so many dierent query methods to learn that it

would take a great amount o time to become amiliar with them. Yet three o the

nine acknowledged that, given time and practice, it should not really be an issue.

Conclusion

The results o the study have shown that corpus use may be helpul or grammar

teaching in English grammar and linguistics classes and perhaps also in writing

classes. As illustrated by the our themes o the fndings, corpus use (perhaps

especially when combined with problem-based learning) may be able to help

students develop critical understanding about lexicogrammatical and broader

language use issues. According to Curzan (2009) and Micciche (2004), teaching

critical understanding o grammar should be an important goal o grammar teach-ing in general because critical thinking is empowering. Because o the diachronic

(across historical periods) and synchronic (cross-register) data available in many

corpora, corpus use may also have the potential o enhancing students awareness

o the dynamic nature o lexicogrammatical and broader language use. For the

same reason, corpus use may be able to help students increase their appreciation

or the context/register-appropriate use o lexicogrammar. Finally, thanks to the

unique ability o corpora in generating language usage patterns/rules that are

otherwise difcult to identiy, corpus use may assist students in grasping nuanceso lexicogrammatical usages or eective communication. In short, corpus use may

help make grammar teaching more empowering, contextualized, and progressive.

Based on the challenges o using corpora identifed in this study, it is para-

mount or the instructor to provide students with adequate training on the use o

corpus, especially the use o various query methods and the knowledge o which

methods to use or the dierent types o problems being investigated. It is also

important or the instructor to be an eective acilitator and to create a classroom

environment and other conditions conducive to corpus study.

As this was an exploratory case study, the generalizability o these fndings

are uncertain. Given this act and given that this study involved only college stu-

dents in a grammar course, it would be interesting and useul in uture research

to conduct studies on corpus use in other types o college English classes such as

writing courses and/or to carry out studies that would make use o other research

designs, e.g., quasi-experimental studies with larger sample sizes or longitudinal

studies that examine the long-term eect o corpus use on students learning. It is

the authors hope that the present study will generate more interest and research

into the use o corpora or other approaches that will make our grammar teachingmore eective and, above all, more empowering to our students, a goal that many

in the feld have advocated and one that we should all strive or.

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appendix: posT-sTudy QuesTionnaire

This survey aims to ascertain your assessment o your learning in the course, especially what

you have learned rom the use o corpus research, contextualization, and lexicogrammar.The survey consists o two parts: (1) open-ended questions and (2) multiple-choice ques-

tions. Please answer all the questions in both parts. Thank you very much or completing

this survey and or participating in the study.

Part I: Open-Ended Questions

In answering the ollowing questions, please be as specifc as possible and give examples

to illustrate your point.

1. What are the most useul and valuable things you have learned in this course?

2. In learning which aspects o language (such as word meanings and lexicogrammati-cal usage patterns across registers and contexts,) have you ound the use o corpora most

helpul? Please give examples to support your answer.

3. Based on your learning this semester, what do you think is the role o context in our

choice o lexicogrammatical items in language use?

4. Traditional (prescriptive) grammar views grammar as rather rigid rules that native

speakers o the language ollow. Do the fndings o the corpus search projects generally

support this view? By the same token, have your corpus fndings changed your view about

grammar? I yes, then how?

5. In this course, you have done both an individual corpus research project and a groupresearch project. Which type do you like better and why?

6. What do you think are the greatest challenge(s) in the use o corpora or English learn-

ing and research?

Part II: Multiple-Choice Questions

Please answer the ollowing questions by checking the answer that is closest to yours.

(1) How helpul has the use o corpora been or you in your study in this course?

1. Not at all. 2. Minimally. 3. Somewhat. 4. Quite. 5. Very.

(2) How much have you learned about English grammar and usage rom the use o corpora?

1. Nothing. 2. Minimal. 3. A little. 4. A good amount. 5. A great deal.

(3) Will you use corpora or your uture English study?

1. No. 2. Probably not. 3. Not sure. 4. Yes. 5. Yes, very much.

(4) Compared with your previous understanding (i.e., beore the course), what is your

current view about the importance of context in determining language users choice o

words/grammar?

1. It is not as important as I previously thought.

2. It is not quite as important as I previously thought.

3. It is about the same as I previously thought.

4. It is more important than I previously thought.

5. It is much more important than I previously thought.

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NOTEs

1. Mainstream English course reers to one oered to the general student body, not to ESL

students. The term mainstream English course is adopted instead o English course or native

English speaking students because research (Canagarajah, 2006; Matsuda, 2006) has shown thatthe student population in todays mainstream classes in American colleges is so multilingual that

the distinction between native/nonnative English speaking is problematic and inaccurate.

2. The frst two are compiled by Proessor Mark Davies o Brigham Young University and the

latter was developed by the BNC Consortium, an industrial/academic consortium led by Oxord

University Press, but all can be accessed via a web interace provided by Proessor Davies.

3. A register is a variety o a language used or a particular purpose (e.g., legalese) or in a particu-

lar social setting (e.g., an inormal setting such as a birthday party or a ormal setting such as a

commencement ceremony).

4. In a corpus, a linguistic item, e.g., a word such as happy or a phrase like by and large, is calleda type while each occurrence o it in the course is labeled a token.

5. As part o the normal procedures or empirical research involving students, at the beginning

o the course, the students were inormed about the study and given a consent orm to read and

sign. The consent orm explained to the students that participation was voluntary, their decision

to participate or not would not aect their grade in the course, and they could stop participating

at any time. The consent orm also made clear what was involved in the study including what

they would need to do.

6. Relevant tokens are those that are indeed what the researcher looks or in a corpus query.

Sometimes, not all tokens that a concordance query generates are relevant. For example, i one

types in [go] on to query or the requency o the phrasal verb go onas in Lie goes on, the

query may generate irrelevant tokens like They oten go onweekends where onis a preposition

or the adverbial phrase o time on weekends rather than an adverbial particle or the verb go

to orm the phrasal verb go on.

REfERENCEs

Aston, G. (2001). Learning with corpora: An

overview. In G. Aston (Ed.). Learning with

corpora(new ed.) (pp. 645). Houston, TX:

Athelstan.

BArrows, H. s., & tAmBlyn, R. (1980).

Problem-based learning: An approach to medi-

cal education. Springer: New York.

BernArd, H. R. (2000). Social research meth-

ods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

BiBer, d., JoHAnsson, s., leecH, G., conrAd,

s., & FineGAn, E. (1999) Longman grammar

of spoken and written English. New York:

Longman.

oxFord University compUtinG serviceson

BeHAlFoFtHe Bnc consortiUm (comp.)

(2001/2007). British National Corpus.

Accessed through the interface provided by

Mark Davies of Brigham Young University at

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/x.asp.

BUrcHField, r. w. (ed.). (1996). The new

Fowlers modern English usage. Oxford, UK:

Clarendon Press.

CArter, r., & mccArtHy, m. Cambridge

grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

cAnAGArAJAH, A. S. (2006). The place of

world Englishes in composition: Pluraliza-

tion continued. College Composition and

Communication, 57, 586619.

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conrAd, S. (2000). Will corpus linguistics

revolutionize grammar teaching in the 21st

century? TESOL Quarterly, 34, 548559.

cUrzAn, A. (2009). Says who? Teaching and

questioning the rules o grammar. PMLA,

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Call or Nominations

CCCC is pleased to announce the call or nominations or the 20112012 CCCC

Writing Program Certifcate o Excellence awards. This award program, established

in 2004, honors up to 20 writing programs a year. As a term, programs is intended to

be capacious in its application and includes: a frst-year writing program or a coherent

confguration o frst-year courses; a basic or developmental writing program; an ESLwriting program; a confguration o writing instruction within an intensive-English

program (this instruction might be integrated into courses rather than appear in separate

writing courses); a vertical sequence o courses (e.g., a concentration, a certifcate, a

minor, a major; a WAC or WID program; a writing program within a writing center; a

writing program designed or a special group. Applications are due August 31, 2011.

For a ull description o this award and the application requirements, please visit http://

www.ncte.org/cccc/awards/writingprogramcert, or contact the CCCC Administrative

Liaison at [email protected].

Search or New Editor oResearch in the Teaching of English

NCTE is seeking a new editor oResearch in the Teaching of English. In May 2013, the

term o the present editors, Mark Dressman, Sarah McCarthey, and Paul Prior, will

end. Interested persons should send a letter o application to be received no later thanAugust 15, 2011. Letters should include the applicants vision or the journal and be

accompanied by the applicants vita, one sample o published writing, and two let-

ters speciying fnancial support rom appropriate administrators at the applicants

institution. Applicants are urged to explore with their administrators the easibility o

assuming the responsibilities o a journal editor. Do not send books, monographs, or

other materials that cannot be easily copied or the search committee. The applicant

appointed by the NCTE Executive Committee in February 2012 will eect a transition,

preparing or his or her frst issue in August 2013. The appointment is or fve years. Ap-

plications should be sent electronically to Kurt Austin, Publications Director, [email protected], or by mail to Kurt Austin, Research in the Teaching of EnglishEditor Search

Committee, NCTE, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096. Questions? Email

[email protected] or call 217-278-3619.

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