Science and Geography Lexicons in English for Primary School Learners: A Corpus-Based Investigation
摘要
Corpora-based studies have influenced language education, especially to adults, since the 1980s with dictionaries and grammar books (Biber et al. in Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Pearson Education, 2000; Sinclair in Corpus, concordance. Oxford University Press, 1991). With the continued growth of schools’ bilingual programs, there is an increasing demand for materials based on real language use. Evidence suggests the use of corpora is among the most important factors for second language learning. However, there is still a paucity of research on corpus-based materials for primary school. Despite the few studies based on corpus (Crosthwaite and Stell in Data-driven learning for the next generation—corpora and DDL for pre-tertiary learners. Routledge, pp. 150–170, 2020; Hirata in Data-driven learning for the next generation—corpora and DDL for pre-tertiary learners. Routledge, 2020; Jablonkai and Csomay in The Routledge handbook of corpora and English language teaching and learning. Routledge, pp. 1–7, 2022), there is no one addressing these specific groups’ linguistic needs. This quantitative investigation aimed at showing the relevance of pedagogic corpora to accelerate young learners’ exposure to English integrating corpus-informed tasks in early levels of primary schools. Key words in context (KWICs) can be potentially useful for vocabulary instruction at the entry point of language learning (Reppen in Routledge handbook of corpus Linguistics. Routledge, 2010). The findings should make an important contribution to the field of corpus linguistics indicating that the use of subject-focused core-aligned lexicon is feasible and has increased learners’ exposure to English while heightening their awareness of language patterns (Granger in Learner English on computer. Addison Wesley Longman, 1998).