Enhancing Development of Communicative Skills in English through Teaching English Collocations in a Corpus-based Approach

Abstract

The author of this paper will substantiate the argument that communicative creativity and developmentof foreign language learners may be enhanced through carefully selected corpora which are appliedas a useful tool in the second language pedagogy. Corpora constitute the easiest way to accessthe contexts in which given words and phrases appear to be suitable for native speakers of a particularlanguage. This means that with their help learners have the opportunity to acquire the actual languagewhich is used in everyday conversations by various groups of people. Moreover, corpora can save alot of time, because learners can focus on language that they need in appropriate situations for determinedcommunicational tasks. That is why learning collocations with their support can be easier andfaster. The aim of this paper is to investigate how corpora can be applied to teaching and learning ofEnglish and whether they are truly indispensable for educational purposes. Accordingly, the results ofempirical research consisting of observations and tests conducted among the Polish students of secondaryschools will be shown to prove how the creative abilities in their communicative performancemay be reinforced with the acquisition of English collocations.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.29.13993