Abstract:
Despite the emerging importance of corpus linguistics and its great potential in facilitating language teaching and learning, a corpus-based linguistic approach still remains largely unknown to the majority of the professional teaching community. This project is based on a differentiation between corpus linguistic research and language pedagogy, where solutions are developed and implemented to facilitate language teaching/learning processes. This project has reduced such gaps through enhancing preservice English teachers’ corpus literacy using flipped learning facilitated by mobile technologies. A comprehensive and user-friendly corpus-based teaching and learning website is developed, and a flipped mobile training programme has been offered to both pre-service and in-service English teachers to help them develop a good corpus literacy and equip them with the skills to integrate a corpus-based approach into language classrooms. Finally, participants’ achievement is evaluated in the context of real classroom teaching. This project utilises corpus research findings at different linguistic levels, and has the potential to generate tangible pedagogical products ( e.g., lesson plans and worksheets) that will benefit the large field of language education, as well as contribute significantly to the professional training of student English teachers from all three faculties by developing their corpus literacy. In addition, this project has helped developing students in the four core competencies: positive personality, positive work attitude, cooperation and teamwork, and interpersonal skills. Finally, this project has demonstrated how flipped learning enhanced by mobile technologies can be used effectively to deliver subject knowledge, which will be beneficial to all disciplines at the university.
Code:
T0212
Principal Project Supervisors:
Keywords provided by authors:
Start Date:
01 Sep 2018
End Date:
29 Feb 2020
Status:
Completed
Result:
The overall results are encouraging. The 12-week flipped mobile teacher training programme has been delivered to about 250 student participants and 50 teacher participants. About 88.9% of the answers from the participants evaluated the workshops positively after the training sessions. In addition, about 99.7% of the answers from the participants revealed an enhanced level of corpus literacy & pedagogy after the training sessions. These results demonstrate the enhanced corpus literacy & pedagogy of participants through joining the training programme.
Our student teachers were actively engaged in developing corpus-based lesson materials. After receiving guidance from both the project team and school teachers, a total of 52 lesson plans are produced by our student teachers. In addition, six high-quality lessons were selected to be taught in real classrooms to over 107 students in four different schools in Hong Kong and mainland China. For these trial lessons, 90.56% of the answers from the students who attended the trial lessons evaluated the trial lessons as positive. This proves the competence of the participating EdUHK student teachers m delivering decent lessons to their future students, through joining this programme.
With the encouraging results, it is expected that the project can bring positive impact to the pre- and in-service teachers in Hong Kong, mainland China and other members of the community.
Impact:
In the past 2 years, we have offered workshops to more than 500 school teachers from more than 180 schools and more than 300 student teachers. Our project has made a significant social impact and we won the Silver Medal at the 47th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva in 2019. More recently, our dedicated website, the corpus-aided platform for language teachers, received The 2020 Esperanto "Access to Language Education" Award in June, this year. It is expected in the coming years that more members of the community in the society can gain inspiration from the rich resources hosted by our online platform which serves as a sustainable corpus-based pedagogical repertoire.
For the 12-week flipped mobile teacher training programme, the pre- and in-service English teachers who participated in the project has developed a good corpus literacy, acquired knowledge in corpus linguistics and developed a systematic understanding of their students' language at different linguistic levels (phonological, lexical, phrasal and grammatical).
A series of 52 corpus-based lessons has been developed with teaching / learning materials for pre- and in-service teachers at different school levels, as a valuable opportunity for student teachers to enhance their pedagogical skills. Through the participation, EdUHK students have learned essential skills and employ various corpus tools to develop their own corpus-based teaching/learning materials to tackle difficult pedagogical issues related to speech, word, phrase or grammar.
Last but not least, the findings of this project have been shared in the 211d ELECC conference that took place at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, with about 150 linguists from the Greater China region joining the conference. Also, the findings have been shared in the XX th International CALL Research Conference that took place at The Education University of Hong Kong, with over 140 linguists attending the conference, representing over 25 countries and regions.
Deliverables:
Books/ Book Chapters/ Journal Articles/ Conference Papers
Ma, Q. A. (2019, July). Developing and evaluating pre-service teachers’ corpus literacy and corpus-based language pedagogy via mobile-enhanced interactive and flipped learning. Keynote speech presentation at the English Language Education in the Chinese Context (ELECC) conference, Beijing Foreign Study University, China.
Ma, Q. A., Leung, Y. C. E., Lin, S. (2019, July). Social interactions of online learning community of pre-service teachers in developing a corpus-based pedagogy for addressing common L2 language mistakes of Chinese learners. Paper presented at the XXth International CALL Research Conference (SocialCALL) 2019, The Education University of Hong Kong.
Seminars/Presentations/Sharing Sessions
Ma, Q. A. (2018, September 4). Experiencing a corpus-based pedagogy for language teaching and learning. Presentation at Gertrude Simon Lutheran College, Yuen Long. (No. of participants: 13)
Ma, Q. A. (2018, October 18). Experiencing corpus-based vocabulary teaching and learning. Presentation at The Education University of Hong Kong. (No. of participants: 49)
Ma, Q. A. (2018, October 29). Enhancing students’ lexical skills in writing with a corpus-based pedagogy. Presentation at the Hong Kong Baptist University. (No. of participants: 10)
Ma, Q. A. (2019, January 25). A corpus-based innovative approach to vocabulary learning and teaching. Workshop presentation at The Education University of Hong Kong. (No. of participants: 35)(https://corpus.eduhk.hk/cap/series_1.php)
Wang, L. (2019, February 22). English-Chinese parallel corpus for language studies. Workshop presentation at The Education University of Hong Kong. (No. of participants: 24) (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/cap/series_2.php)
Ma, Q. A. (2019, February 27). Vocabulary learning and teaching via a corpus-based pedagogy. Workshop presentation at The Education University of Hong Kong. (No. of participants: 80)
Lee, F. K. J. (2019, March 15). Using corpus linguistics to improve grammar teaching and learning. Workshop presentation at The Education University of Hong Kong. (No. of participants: 40) (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/cap/series_3.php)
Chen, H. C. R. (2019, April 3). Using learners’ corpora for pronunciation teaching and learning. Workshop presentation at The Education University of Hong Kong. (No. of participants: 28) (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/cap/series_4.php)
Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials (including online resources)
A corpus-based programme, with training materials, lesson plans and instruction videos, which are available at the website “The Corpus-Aided Platform for Language Teachers (CAP)” (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/cap/index.php)
Financial Year:
2018-19
Type:
TDG