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?

5. In general, students seem to have a positive learning experience with corpora. The impact of seeing language data on a computer screen is more immediate and the practice of discerning patterns of language use oneself seems to have a deeper and more long-lasting effect than the traditional methods of learning rules and trying to understand abstract explanations. Students respond well to the inductive method, moving from observation of the data to classification and generalization. 6. Another advantage of using corpus data is that lexis, grammar and other linguistic features are presented together, not as isolated entities (as in traditional coursebooks, dictionaries and grammars). This is a more accurate and more holistic view of language. 7. Here is a brief summary of the reasons for using computers/corpora for language studies: a) accuracy - printed books have to be brief, so often leave many questions unanswered b) comprehensiveness - especially for non-native teachers, access to a wider range of language c) speed - no need to look up several books separately (e.g. dictionary, grammar, coursebook) or look in several different places within a book (using contents page, cross-references, or index) d) repetition - tasks can be repeated instantly, so checking and validation are easier e) access - many people can use the same data at the same time 8. When analysing texts, computers can do most of the tasks you can do manually, but can do them more quickly and more accurately. But computers can also enable you to do types of analysis that you wouldn't have thought of doing before. So may I encourage any diffident colleagues to try out some of the techniques and strategies I have suggested, and I am confident that within a few weeks they will begin to realize that we can - and must - harness the power of the Internet, and the growing abundance of electronic services, and use them to enhance and expand our range of teaching and learning opportunities! 26