(2078) USING CORPUS LINGUISTICS TO LOOK AT PHRASES ACTUALLY SPOKEN ON A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE PRONUNICATION

摘要

Corpus linguistics, the analysis of large, computerized collections (corpora) of real-life language, is a valuable tool for the language learning researcher. Analysis with corpus linguistics can reveal patterns that show how language is really used outside the classroom. For teachers, using documented patterns and derived real world examples can be an effective teaching tool. Moreover, learners can also use corpora tools to discover language patterns for themselves, and answer their own questions about language use. Even despite its immense promise, corpus linguistics has been little used to formulate practical applications for ESL speaking and pronunciation teachers; the reasons for this gap are multi-fold. Much corpus linguistics research is rather theoretical in nature. In part, because of the high cost of transcription, corpus linguistics tends to focus on written over transcribed spoken language. Furthermore, in ESL research overall, pronunciation is a less-studied, albeit significant area. Given this dearth of practical corpus linguistics research that offers ESL pronunciation teaching implications, this research offers insight into what a very large sample of English speakers actually said, and draws specific implications for pronunciation teaching. Specifically, this particular corpus linguistics study derives lexical bundles-in this case, 4 word phrases that occur more often than chance-from a transcribed corpus of 1.84 million words that were spoken on a university campus. The lexical bundles (or phrases) most often used are analyzed to determine 1) What do these bundles actually do in a communicative context; what do they mean? and 2) What are the implications of these findings for pronunciation teaching? Through the data, it will be shown that in university speech, a majority of speech is participant-oriented, that is, speech that frames opinions or directly engages the listener. Without adequate learner use of these bundles, and clear pronunciation of these bundles, communication may be hampered. In particular, connected speech will be argued as an essential pronunciation feature of the most highly used bundles.