Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Ramesh Krishnamurthy: Electronic resources for language teaching and learning: cornucopia or information overload?

RAMESH KRISHNAMURTHY ELECTRONIC RESOURCES FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING: CORNUCOPIA OR INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Abstract : The rapid increase in the amount of language teaching and learning materials available in electronic form, whether on CD-Rom or on the World Wide Web, now presents teachers and learners with problems of how to find them and how to evaluate them. This paper, based on the author's personal experiences and current research activities, describes the problems and suggests ways in which the situation may be improved in the future. 1. Introduction As a teacher of courses in Corpus Lexicography and Linguistics since 1991, 1 probably encountered many of the problems associated with electronic resources earlier than many of my colleagues. But now that the Internet has exploded into the consciousness of every teacher and learner, and resources have increased at such an incredible rate, more and more teachers and students have become aware of them. In fact, I have been involved in teaching courses in Corpus Lexicography and Linguistics (especially in relation to the teaching of English as a Foreign Language) since 1984, to trainee lexicographers within the Cobuild project, but it was only in 1991 that I started introducing these topics to a wider audience. 2. Courses Since 1991, I have delivered corpus-related courses to students at the University of Birmingham, then at other universities within the UK and abroad. I have also given many individual talks and lectures on aspects of these subjects at institutions of higher education (including the Esterházy Karoly Teachers College at Eger) and other public venues all over Europe, to audiences of undergraduates, postgraduates, professionals, and interested 17