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Recent years have seen a vast increase in the amount of materials such as dictionaries and grammars which are 'corpus-based' and it is difficult to dispute the contribution of corpus linguistics to English language description.There have also been many developments in the use of corpora in the classroom in data-driven learning (Johns 1991).However, this rapid development in new technology has not been matched in teacher education provision.This paper aims to make a case for the inclusion of corpus linguistics in initial language teacher education.We argue that apart from enhancing teachers' research skills and language awareness, language corpora can aid pedagogic awareness through the use of in-house classroom corpora, and raise sociocultural awareness through the comparative investigation of large-scale commercially available corpora.We also look at the theoretical and practical considerations that need to be taken into account in the integration of language corpora in a teacher education program.We conclude that it is vital, given the pervasive nature of language corpora and their findings (especially in published materials), that future teachers have the critical evaluative skills to discern and mediate for the needs of their learners.Applied linguists researching the field of technology and education have, for some time, referred to the technological and digital global economy in which we live (for example, Cummins, 2000;Warschauer, 2000; Chapelle, 2001, among others).Literacy is no longer just about reading and writing.Society now demands 'multiliteracies' (Warschauer, 2000), which include a high proficiency in digital and on-line competencies (see also Pennington, 2001 andDoering &Beach, 2002).Consequently, language teacher educators have a fundamental obligation to educate teachers in this respect.The initiation and implementation of many national educational policies and directives targeted at teacher education institutions are testament to such an obligation.Murray (1998) and Barnes and Murray (1999) discuss in-service and initial information and communication technology (hereafter ICT) teacher education provision for foreign language teaching in this context and suggest that 'ICT can no longer be an added extra but rather an intrinsic part of a teacher's methodological repertoire' and conclude that 'this transition must occur in the initial teacher training period to have the greatest effect' (Barnes & Murray, 1999, p. 167) because many novice teachers are too busy with other matters in the first years of teaching to assume the task of developing and integrating ICT into their teaching and learning.
O’Keeffe et al. (Wed,) studied this question.