Document Type

Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Spring 2014

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

TESOL

Committee Chair

Loretta Gray

Second Committee Member

Natalie Lefkowitz

Third Committee Member

Carl Rosser

Abstract

In recent years, ESL and EFL teachers have experimented with using language corpora as pedagogical tools. Corpora have proved useful for providing examples of authentic language use that help deepen both students' and teachers' understanding of contemporary English. Due to the increasing number of available online corpora, teachers who wish to use corpora as pedagogical tools may find the choices overwhelming. This study compared three online corpora of Contemporary American English in terms of their usability for certain types of searches. The corpora chosen for this study were the Google Books Ngram Corpus, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE), and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). In each corpus, searches were performed that could be described as morphological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, discursive, or any combination of these. The results produced by each search were analyzed and discussed in terms of their value for teachers and students.

Comments

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