Teaching and learning foreign languages

Insights from classroom corpus research

Abstract

A classroom corpus is a set of audio- or videorecordings of authentic L2 lessons, which have been transcribed and prepared for analysis. Such a corpus provides direct insight into how the L2 curriculum is delivered and experienced in the classroom in real time.

In this contribution we first present some examples of past research using classroom corpora, emphasising the variety of perspectives which can motivate such research. We then describe the ‘Learning French’ corpus of lessons taught to young Anglophone beginners, and the insights concerning input, engagement and L2 learning deriving from different analyses of this corpus. In conclusion we discuss the potential contributions of classroom corpus research to our understanding of pedagogy and the improvement of practice.