Corpora are essentially electronically stored files of carefully selected samples of either spoken or written language, or a mixture of both. Using them to teach English is like going on a voyage, a voyage of discovery in which students play the role of ‘language researchers’; this can be very motivating for them but time-consuming for teachers. Corpus data are relatively easy to access: they are literally a click of a mouse away and can frequently be used as raw data (print-outs of lines from a concordance can be brought to class or students can be asked to access a corpus and analyse the data on their own). However, teachers need to make a selection of what they want to present or have analysed, and they must also provide clear instructions or guiding questions for their students.
I would like to share a few tips that I hope will be useful to anyone who feels the need for supplementary materials for their course books. Language corpora are an excellent source of teaching materials and can be used to teach the four language skills as well as grammar and vocabulary (see O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter 2007). The article suggests several ways of using corpora to teach the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Corpora are essentially electronically stored files of carefully selected samples of either spoken or written language, or a mixture of both. Using them to teach English is like going on a voyage, a voyage of discovery in which students play the role of ‘language researchers’; this can be very motivating for them but time-consuming for teachers. Corpus data are relatively easy to access: they are literally a click of a mouse away and can frequently be used as raw data (print-outs of lines from a concordance can be brought to class or students can be asked to access a corpus and analyse the data on their own). However, teachers need to make a selection of what they want to present or have analysed, and they must also provide clear instructions or guiding questions for their students.
I would like to share a few tips that I hope will be useful to anyone who feels the need for supplementary materials for their course books. Language corpora are an excellent source of teaching materials and can be used to teach the four language skills as well as grammar and vocabulary (see O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter 2007). The article suggests several ways of using corpora to teach the skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.