Corpus Linguistics: an Inspiring Methodology to Design English Didactic Materials

Abstract

In the last decades, it has been said that in foreign language learning settings the correct selection of didactic materials is paramount in order to provide learners with appropriate input of the target language (TL) acquisition. Bearing this fact in mind, this paper presents a research in the area of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). More specifically, about how Corpus Linguistics Analysis can be used by the Students of English Studies Degree to enrich their future didactic materials when they become teachers. The procedure followed is a comparison between the content of some of the most used textbooks and the ones provided in the online corpus. Attending to the issue that an important number of course books present a limited learning context (LC). This paper focuses its attention on phrasal verbs analysis due to the fact that they are widely employed in English daily communication and although it is important to use them fluently to sound like a native speaker communicator, still foreign learners encounter many difficulties in their use. Thus, at the end of this paper some activities will be provided to enforce the effectiveness of corpus analysis to create tasks.