Using Corpora in English Language Teaching –A Brief Overview and Sample Corpus-Based Activities

Corpus linguistics has seen an expansion in scope over the past several decades. It has also found  its way into language classrooms. Corpus-based approaches have gradually become a common practice  among  English  teachers.  Some  research  studies  have  established  that  corpus-based  approaches  are  extremely beneficial to both teacher and learner. Aiming to illustrate how corpora can be used in English  language  teaching,  this  paper  offers  brief  explanations  of  what  corpora  is,  elaborating  on  the  most  relevant  advantages  of  such  an application in language classroom in terms of the teacher’s role and learners’ autonomy, motivation, self-reflection. Finally, the paper offers sample corpus-based activities  (with  concordances  from  COCA  and  BNC)  that  teachers  can  use  printed  out  as  hand-outs  in  the  classroom.