Becoming corpus literate: An in-service EFL teacher education framework for integrating corpora into EFL teaching

Abstract

While much language teaching research has extolled the advantages of using corpora in the language learning classroom, uptake of corpora by language teachers remains low (Poole, 2020; Charles, 2020). Frankenberg-Garcia (2012a) reports that this is partly due to teachers having little time to prepare lessons with corpora given their busy teaching schedules. However, we also argue it is because teachers are not exposed to corpora sufficiently in pre-service teacher training programmes. This paper outlines a training framework for in-service EFL practitioners which will enable them to become corpus literate over a period of weeks. The framework utilises observational learning, and we gauge trainees’ corpus literacy development based on their reflections and experiences of teaching with corpora in class. Similar to previous corpus training research, teachers reported an overwhelmingly positive experience of learning to use a corpus for classroom materials design. Unlike previous trainings with corpora, teachers commented that using corpora did not require more time in lesson preparation when compared with traditional methods. Recommendations for future iterations of the training programme include the incorporation of additional corpora, tools and user interfaces.