USING CORPUS DATA TO TEACH COLLOCATIONS IN MEDICAL ENGLISH

Abstract

Corpus linguistics provides English teachers with an opportunity to analyse large amounts of language data to facilitate language learning and allows teachers to produce authentic in-house materials. Textbooks started to integrate corpus data (see Carter & McCarthy, 1997). However, surprisingly, corpus-based activities and materials have not completely reached the classroom. Following Johns (1991), this preliminary study aims to assess the relevance of corpus data in a mainstream ESP classroom, specifically, in teaching medical English using a data-driven learning approach. A longitudinal critical needs analysis on 323 Turkish medical students revealed that students perceive learning meanings of English words with collocations as a highly important need. The present study seeks to satisfy the perceived needs of medical students who are learning medical English. Considering students’ content knowledge, medical specialists were consulted to choose a relevant medical journal. A self-compiled specialised corpus was built from research articles in the Journal of Medical Case Reports. The corpus comprised 31,731 words. The corpus data were used to teach students collocations and to produce in-house ESP materials, such as concordance lines, that foster autonomous learning and active participation in first-year medical students. Pedagogical applications of corpus work are discussed.