Fifth Posting for Evaluation.

Articles about concordance.

I have successfully found 2 articles that are related to concordance. The links or websites of the articles are http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num1 and http://www.milwburnsclub.org/works/aboutc.htm. This two websites consist articles that relate to concordancing and its applications in language learning.

Summary of the articles that i have found.

Firstly, i would like to summarize the article from the first link. The use of a web-based concordancing program using an interface design similar to the one used at the MICASE concordancing site to help students appropriately choose reporting verbs. Appropriate reporting verbs are important for asserting credible claims in academic papers. An interface was created that asked the students to make lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical choices based on a preset number of criteria related to the decisions writers make in choosing reporting verbs. Based on these choices, the interface could query a database of sentences that had been derived from a corpus of academic writing. The user would then be provided with a small sample of sentences using reporting verbs that matched the criteria that had been selected. The paper discusses how the assumptions about pedagogy for teaching about reporting verbs were incorporated into the design features of the interface and how the implementation of the concordancing site was integrated with the teaching of grammar and vocabulary in an L2 academic writing class.

Summarization of the second article from the second link is that although concordance was initially introduced more than 20 years ago and has acquired a loyal user base, it is still sometimes erroneously compared with traditional database management software. However, the simple fact is that Concordance cannot be compared in any respect to a typical, general purpose database management program. On the contrary, Concordance is a highly focused program that features sophisticated text search and retrieval functions specifically designed for managing the high volumes of data generated in litigation. The primary purpose of this document is to provide the reader with greater insight into Concordance by clearly defining not only what it is, but also what it isn't. We'll start the process by looking at traditional database management and how it compares to text database management.

What are the benefits of concordance will give to language learning and language teachers?

Concordancing programs do not provide "correct" answers to queries about grammar and lexical questions but rather help create a learning environment where the user has to induce one appropriate answer from possibly many appropriate answers. As a result, concordancing programs not only provide a different role for grammar teachers but also a different approach for the learner. Learners must construct the best answers from the sample sentences without obtaining feedback on whether their answers are correct. Concordance has made grammar teaching more about making appropriate choices and less about learning prescriptive rules.