This section focuses on the pedagogical integration of ICT in language learning.
On the basis of experience gained during the development of TCP, we will take a
5 A detailed account of the search options in TCP and OIE is given at: http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/OIE/html/searchhints.html Figure 2: KWIC concordance in TCP
look at the pedagogical advantages that can be exploited in such an environment.
There are also great pedagogical challenges to be faced when ICT is introduced to students in a new learning environment, these will be discussed in the second part of this section.
Following the pedagogical trends of recent years, TCP invites students to take part in problem-based learning and thereby be more actively involved in their own learning process; it is learner-centred rather than teacher-centred. As has been shown in previous sections, students are “forced” to make use of the tool at hand—the corpus—in order to answer the questions satisfactorily. An electronic corpus is well suited for problem-based learning since it does not give a ready answer; the concordances only point the user in the right direction. Ultimately, it is the combination of corpus analysis and grammatical knowledge that will provide the student with the answers.
Another advantage of ICT-related learning is the aspect of autonomous learning. An interactive environment such as TCP encourages students to work independently and take responsibility for their own learning. Again, an active approach to learning is applied—it is self-directed and self-driven—and students may fi nd that they are more motivated by this. Rather than being instructed by a tutor, they can make the learning process their own and practise whenever it suits them.
One of the main assets of TCP (and indeed OIE) is that students are introduced to a language resource that will be of great use to them in the future. In a way, it is similar to learning how to use a dictionary in an effi cient way, which is a skill one can make use of throughout one’s life. This advantage of being made familiar with the use of corpora could be termed learning for life. Whether in future study or work-related situations, a corpus can always be consulted whenever uncertainties in text production arise. Although the OIE Corpus is copyright-protected and cannot be used outside a university setting, more and more corpora are being made available, for free or for a small fee, either online or on CD-ROM. The principles of using the OIE Corpus can be easily transferred to other corpora and corpus search engines, and, indeed, to searching the Internet.
The process of developing OIE revealed several potential challenges related to the fl exible nature of corpus-driven exercises on the web. Motivation seems to be a key issue. Students are reluctant to spend time on optional and supplementary teaching/learning materials, even if it is to practise their own skills. A log was set up for OIE to map the site activity and, as suspected, relatively few students emerged as regular users (cf. Ebeling 2005). TCP is just about to be launched and a similar log has not yet been activated. However, it is hoped that motivation will increase as a result of the competitive aspect integrated within TCP.
The use of corpora in language teaching has shown that students are not immediately comfortable with such a method (cf. Kennedy & Miceli 2001).
While some struggle with the search interface, others struggle with the analysis, i.e., how to interpret the concordance lines in a corpus search. Since the use of modern corpus methods has proven to be a challenge even in on-campus teaching where students are guided by an instructor, the challenge is even greater in a teacher-less environment such as TCP. This is the reason why TCP has a very simple search interface that should be suitable for beginners; it is not really more sophisticated than performing a web search. Instructions are also given, with illustrations, for interpreting concordances. Nevertheless, students may feel more comfortable if they are introduced to the use of corpora in a face-to-face encounter between students and teacher. As a result they may also feel more motivated to spend some time doing exercises when the searching itself is no longer an obstacle.
This leads us to a related challenge that needs to be addressed: integration of TCP in on-campus teaching. With regard to the diffi culty some students may have with the use of corpora in language learning, it would be benefi cial if students were encouraged—to a greater extent than they are today—to use OIE and TCP through lectures and seminars. However, this largely depends on the teachers’ interests as well as on the availability of equipment; to make this work in seminars or lectures, large computer rooms would be needed. There is, of course, also the question of how much time teachers want to invest in introducing students to corpora. In this connection it should be mentioned that many students are not intimidated by this new and unfamiliar tool at all.
However, to introduce the method in on-campus courses would stress the
importance of corpora in modern language studies as well as getting the message out to more students.