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Anonymous Posted 18 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Corpora: Native discovery

0 Let's say that for years, based on you native intuition, you had been telling students that an certain item was not used in a certain registers/text-types/genres. What if, by searching many corpora, you found out that the item in question was actually used and very frequently in such registers/text-types/genres? What would you do? What would be your reaction? 0-
  

Top answer

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— Mister Micawber

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35 Answers
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0 .02br
00I would burn the corpora.0-
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0<I would burn the corpora.>02br
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00Eliminate the competition, right? 02img0-
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Mister Micawber12cite10.12br
10I would burn the corpora.12br
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12blockquote
10And I would come and pour water on the burning ashes.02br
00CB 0-
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0I would assume that the students had misunderstood my original explanation.02br
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00MrP0-
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0 I would say "Holy cow! This is really surprising! How come I never noticed?"02br
00But of course a teacher should teach dialects he knows pretty well. So a teacher who teaches London English, would be surprised to find out there are some common expressions in use in London he never heard about.02br
00But if the teacher from London is talking about the English used in Lo
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0<I would assume that the students had misunderstood my original explanation.>02br
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00Yes, I've seen you do that a number of times. 0-
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0Hi,02br
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00An important teaching principle is to be honest with your students. I'd tell them. Wouldn't you?02br
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00I'd also discuss my reasons for my original comments.02br
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00Best wishes, Clive0-
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Anonymous<I would assume that the students had misunderstood my original explanation.>

Emotion: travel
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Hi "Anonymous"

Let's imagine that you had been telling students for years that "cannot" is commonly spelled as one word, and then one day found these shocking pieces of information:
The BNC, for the Academic register (where one would hope to find professional writers) gives CAN NOT- 6422 per 1 million words, but 0 for CANNOT.
The American Corpus, f
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Be truthful. Wouldn't your reaction be similar to Mr Mic's?

Maybe, but let's hear your pers
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