Corpus linguistics MOOC: Second run beginning soon

We are running the corpus MOOC again – and we are really looking forward to it. In the first run of the course we taught social scientists and other researchers from across the globe about how to use corpus linguistics to study language. We looked at a range of topics of contemporary social relevance in doing so – including how we talk about disability and how newspapers write about refugees. We also looked at key areas where corpus linguistics has contributed greatly, notably the areas of dictionary construction and language teaching.

The result, I must say, exceeded our expectations – which were pretty high. People really seemed to like the course and get a lot from it. Even though the approach was entirely new to most students, a very large number worked through all eight weeks of the course. The feedback on our training has been exceptionally strong – a look at the #corpusMOOC hashtag on Twitter will give a good idea of the overwhelmingly positive response to that course. The following quote, from a Chinese notice board on which our MOOC was discussed, gives a strong sense of how the course succeeded both in training students and in showing them that corpora have a key role to play in exploring social science questions (thanks to Richard Xiao for the translation):

“CorpusMOOC, with its assembly of the best corpus linguists and rich content, cannot be praised enough … The greatest benefit for me has been that the course has widened my vision: corpus linguistics and the applications of corpus technologies have gone far beyond what I had imagined – more resembling big data in the field of social science research instead of being confined to linguistics… I think the significance of this course lies not merely in teaching a large number of corpus techniques but more, rather, in introducing corpora and demonstrating what corpora can be used for, thus making us aware of them and helping us understand their importance … the corpus-based approach is the unavoidable approach to language in future.”

The first run of the MOOC had a great impact – the course was taken mainly by women (70.44% of students), and drew participants from all continents and a wide range of countries – including places as far flung as the British Antarctic Territory! The areas in which course participants were working and researching were heavily oriented to the social sciences, with students drawn from areas such as business consulting and management, health and social care and media and publishing. The greatest contribution of the course, however, seems to have come from providing training to teachers/lecturers in the UK and beyond. Given that the great majority of students were taking the course for career development (78.59%), the course was likely not only to have had a strong effect on this group but also, by extension, on the students who are exposed to the ideas in the course by the teachers/lecturers who took it.

Having read this, you can probably understand why we were keen to run the course again. Through it we have been able to get a good understanding of corpus linguistics across to thousands of people around the globe. We have made a few changes to the course based on the feedback we received – all designed to make a good course better! This includes new lectures (for example on the language used in cancer treatment) and new in conversation pieces with corpus linguists (such as Douglas Biber).

If this run of the course proves as popular as the first, which we think it should, we plan to run the course every September. Who knows when we will stop!

For a limited time, registration is still open. Book your place on ‘Corpus linguistics: method, analysis, interpretation’ now. 

Is this the way to do Corpus Linguistics? Feedback system for the Corpus Linguistics MOOC

Corpus linguistics (CL) is a set of incredibly versatile methods of language analysis applicable to a number of different contexts. So, for example, if you are interested in language, culture, history or society, corpus linguistics has something to offer. Today, thanks to the amazing development in computer technology, corpus linguistic tools are literally only a mouse click away or a touch away, if you are using a tablet or a smartphone. Are you then ready to get your hands dirty with computational analysis of large amounts of language? If the answer is yes, you have probably already registered for the new massively open online course (MOOC) on Corpus Linguistics, created and run by Tony McEnery and other members of the CASS team. (If you haven’t managed to register yet, you can still do so at the FutureLearn website. The course kicks off on 27th January 2014.)

An essential part of the Corpus Linguistics MOOC is its unique feedback system. You will be given a question, a data set and a software tool, and you will be asked to apply what you have learnt in the MOOC lectures to real language analysis. You will explore a topic using corpus techniques which will enable you to uncover interesting patterns in language data. We have a range of topics in store for you. These include English grammar, British and American language and culture, historical discourse of 17th century news books and learner language. But don’t worry, we won’t ask you to write an essay on the topic. Instead, we will give you a number of analyses and descriptions of the corpus data and you will decide which ones use the corpus techniques correctly. After you’ve made your decisions we will provide detailed comments on each of the options. In this way, the CASS Corpus Linguistics MOOC system aims to promote independent learning so that next time you can apply the corpus tools with confidence to answer your own questions.