HAAL 2016

Keynote Speakers

 

Professor John Flowerdew, City University of Hong Kong

 

Some recent corpus-based approaches to researching and
teaching academic discourse

 

Abstract: In this plenary talk I will present three research projects I have been working on recently using corpus-based techniques. The first of these projects concerns a corpus-based study of signalling nouns, abstract nouns like argument, fact, idea, and problem, which are very important in establishing cohesive academic English. I will provide some data from a recent large-scale project focussing on the behaviour of these nouns. The second project is an experimental, classroom-based approach to the teaching of research writing involving data-driven learning, a computer-based approach to language learning in which the task of the learner is to "discover" the target language. I will describe how, with a colleague, I went about designing and teaching this course. The third project is a larger scale one in which I am working with a small team to introduce the data-driven learning approach to research writing to all research students in Hong Kong. I will describe the rationale and state of play with this project.