A report on corpus

Due to the discrepancy which exists between languages, it is possible that a word in one language might have more than two counterparts in other language. “Field” and “sphere” are a good example for this: in Korean, they have the same meaning. To help students discern the subtle differences between the two words, I employed Corpus of American Temporary English and chose “KWIC” and “Compare” section where I analyzed tens of concordances. This method attributes to tell the difference between the two words especially with respect to three items: syntactic position each word takes within a sentence, words that typically follow each, and the genre in which each is used commonly.

Originally, I surmised that the major meaning for both words would be “an area of activity, interest, etc., especially within a particular business or profession.” My supposition was right only for sphere, considering the result that field was most frequently used as “a piece of ground devoted to sports or contests.” These interpretations are supported by the following date below.

First off, more than half (3401 tokens out of 6259) of the concordances of sphere were found in academic usage. It chiefly appears right after an adjective such as “political, private, economic, public, etc.” - public is the adjective that most frequently preceded it. Besides, it was directly followed by “of” as in  “sphere of art/culture/consumption”, all of which indicate that the word means “an area of a certain thing.” Though not prominent in academic corpora, it was also used in fictions (1140 tokens) and magazines (1112 tokens).

On the other hand, field was most often followed by adjectives like magnetic and research. This result is likely to result from the fact that the combination of words “magnetic field” has became a common terminology in science. However, field was also frequently used after words like “playing, open, goal,” in fictions, newspapers and magazines. And the number of such corpora outnumbers that of academic corpus. Based on the above analysis, it is inferred that field is most used as “a piece of ground devoted to sports or contents,” as was mentioned before.

As a final point, field is a more often used word than sphere - it appears approximately 13 times more than sphere. However, because its primary meaning is chiefly found in sports, sphere is a better word when students are trying to describe an area of a certain thing.

Reference: Davies, Mark. (2008-) The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.

ELT W6 Assignment

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In the previous lesson, each of us was asked to pick up one best literature; thus, each one made decision according to his/her individual preference. While reading through others’ essays on the defence of “To a Daughter Leaving Home”, interestingly, I learned that there are common reasons for decision among our work. In other words, even though each essay didn’t exhibit the same reasons, all the reasons suggested in my essay appear in the totality of the essays.

         At first, both John and Hayoung agreed that the poem benefits students in affective ways: John expects the students to imagine “how the parents are feeling and thinking toward their children” while Hayoung says, “the students will face a turning point to go back to the arms of their parents reading this poem.” These anticipations assume a common premise that reading this poem would help students to put themselves in their parents’ place so that they get to empathize with their parents.

         Secondly, Mijung and John concurred with each other in that the familiarity of the topic of the poem to the students enables quick access to their background knowledge. Mijung writes, “students can easily connect their experiences to the poem.” Likewise, John asserts that “it is easy to activate their (students’) schema.” This kind of transfer seems to makes them feel comfortable thus inducing active engagement to the lesson.

         In the last place, both Hayoung and Mijung mention educational effects found in the expressions of the poem; however they highlight different aspects. What Hayoung points out is that the students would take advantage of the expressions to be creative because the narrator of the poem depicts his emotion and the situation in such an ingenious way as in the word ‘distance’ in “more breakable/with distance.” On the other hand, argue that its rhetoric is especially helpful because students can “refer these kind of expressions” to “make up their own writings.”

         In conclusion, the bloggers adopted “To a Daughter Leaving Home” to teach their students for three reasons: its affective benefit, accessibility to schema, and educational effects of its expressions.

ELT W5 Assignment - Defending an opinion on selecting literature

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When selecting teaching materials, a teacher usually puts at least two aspects into consideration: attractiveness and appropriateness. Each work has its own unique style and has different points pertaining to these two aspects; but, I would recommend “To a Daughter Leaving Home” to high school students because of its empathic benefits and appropriateness in language.

It strongly attracts the readers as it assumes a very common situation that is quite probable in the past and also likely to happen in the future: raising a child. Along with its simulation, the narrator effectively depicts his emotion as he monopolizes like “my own mouth rounding in surprise” and “like a handkerchief waving goodbye.” These factors draw attention from the readers and enable them to empathize with the narrator in depth.

In addition, the poem benefits high school students in affective aspects. Its theme, the parent’s concern and sincere love toward his child, is something that most students forgot driven to today’s highly competitive atmosphere and something to be restored. Therefore, the message of the poem is even meaningful to those students; they are given a chance to recall how they were raised, and realize the parental love.

Lastly, not only the message but also the language of the poem is proper for high school students. The poem includes a couple of essential prefabricated expressions like “I kept waiting” and “with distance.” The general level of vocabulary used is also apt for the students; it is not too difficult, but at the same time, there are several advanced vocabularies like “wobble” and “flapping.”

To sum up, the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” is an attractive poem having a style that elicits empathy, which is beneficial for students in affective aspects. Plus, the language in the poem is greatly helpful for them and is at the right level - moderate but challenging enough. For these reasons, I strongly argue that “To a Daughter Leaving Home” is highly recommended literature, especially for high school students.