Kibbitzer Kalamity ;)

      The information presented in Tim John's Kibbitzers offers an incredibly in-depth look at the target language and its correct usage. Using the first Kibbitzer as an example, it was interesting to see how the data set presented both the original and revised sentences, in which the word "incessant" was replaced by the suggested word, "steadfast" (Kibbitzer 1). The fact that the data is provided below the comparison sentences for each term helps to illustrate the differing connotations between the two terms. This type of Kibbitzer usage could be very useful in the classroom. The various Kibbitzers could be employed to help illustrate how one word could be a better choice than another, which would be helpful for English Language Learners because it would explain and provide examples in context as to what words could work better. 

The MICASE Kibbitzers were fairly interesting to read through; however, some appeared to be more difficult for ESL students. Using the "Among or Between" Kibbitzer (MICASE Kibbitzer 2), a teacher could use this to gradually introduce students to the differences between the two words. It starts out by introducing the simple rules that apply to both words, then slowly progresses into describing the more complex rules, and finally concludes by showing the language usage in the data. While these Kibbitzers explore each data point thoroughly, I think John's Kibbitzers appear to be more student-friendly and accessible. If a teacher was to use these in the classroom, I would recommend John's Kibbitzers because the target language lesson is more approachable (and there are 81 available vs. MICASE's 14).  

Corpora Critique

Evaluation criteria: 

1. Design must be principled, "the texts in a corpus need to represent the type of language that the corpus is intending to capture" (Reppen 3)
2. Corpus must consist of "a large collection of texts" (Reppen 3)

American National Corpus (ANC)

     This corpus is made up of over 20 million words, with ~15 million words being available for free download, of which 3,217,772 words are spoken and 11,406,555 are written. It appears that the types of sources are fairly limited, with spoken words coming from some face to face, but a majority from phone switchboard conversations. The written texts are more varied; however, they too are much more limited than the sources offered by other corpora. The texts appear to come from more with a majority of the texts coming from more formal sources, being from domains such as "technical," "journal," and "government" (ANC 2009). While this corpus would be useful for tasks requiring the use of more technical data, it would not be appropriate for lessons aimed at introducing students to conversational spoken data or other more colloquial data. 

     The corpus home page does not seem very user-friendly, and I did not like the interface. Another element of it that was that users would have to pay or download the free part onto their computers, which is not ideal. 

 Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

     COCA is an amazing source of data. It is "composed of over 425 million words in more than 175,000 texts" (COCA 2011). Because COCA's data is broken down into various registers, the data can be used to teach multiple types of lessons. Such registers include spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic (COCA 2011). Compared the the ANC, this corpus offers a much wider variety of data. Additionally, the easy-to-navigate interface opens up the opportunity for student interaction using the corpus in classroom lessons. 

Cambridge English Corpus (CEC)

     Dang! The CEC consists of over 1.5 billion words throughout all of the CEC corpora resources. The reason that it is so much bigger than the aforementioned corpora is because it pulls texts from multiple resources, ultimately gathering information that covers British English, American English and Learner English (CEC 2012). I am thoroughly impressed by the extremely large range of resources that the CEC offers, and think that the Learner English corpora resources would be an incredibly useful tool for ESL classes. Because the Learner English resources include texts from the Learners' written English and Error coded learner written English corpora, one could choose to incorporate error coded or non-coded texts in the classroom. These examples could help students identify types of grammatical points and could supplement lessons on various topics. 

Online Video Projects

     I love the idea of engaging students in learning through the use of student-produced audio. I think that by giving the students a chance to be creative, it enhances student motivation and increases their interest in the assignments. Personally, I love assignments that allow me to be creative and interpret them individually. The idea of using student-produced videos would be an incredible option, as long as it was feasible, i.e. sufficient/available technology, relevant to coursework, etc. Some issues I noticed with the Phrasal Verb Video Dictionary was that some of the videos were lower quality due to the recording devices, while others were difficult to hear. Another issue that I noticed was that some of the definitions were not correctly used in the videos. For example, in the "on the ball" definition video, one student says, "On the ball, the teacher is coming." Another example where the students mixed up the definitions was "touch on." The students said, " touch on, I need to study," and in response, another student said, "Okay, I will touch on- it was great." I think the students confused the meaning of "touch on" with summarize in the video, whereas they could have used it in a clearer manner.  

     Despite the shortcomings, the Phrasal Verb Video Dictionary is a great idea! Since the class I observed is an ESL Low-Intermediate Reading course, this type of idea could be incorporated into a lesson and assignment to help introduce students to vocabulary that could come up in future readings. If I were to teach this type of class, I would try to incorporate a variety of activities to engage and hold the students' interest. Rather than simply holding class everyday where the students had to sit still and read, I would try to encourage the development of skills necessary to successfully read through interactive and entertaining activities. One way of incorporating video in the classroom with the students would be to have them complete various activities relating to course texts, such as conducting "author interviews," where the students would be in charge of researching the author to ensure a realistic interview. Additionally, the students could conduct interviews similar to the one in the Mexican Immigration to the U.S. YouTube video. In order to add authenticity to the assignments, students could interview real authors (if possible) or peers, random people, etc. to get opinions on a certain text, topics, etc. Another assignment could include students recreating or rewriting/changing the ending to a story and acting it out on video.