Day 29: COCA + Reflection (the last day!)
Objectives:
- Familiarize students with the basics functions of COCA
- Provide them with additional resources for further use of COCA
- Complete reflective essay # 3
- Finish Course: Clarification of final paper
Part I: COCA Introduction [3:30-3:40 (10 min)]
Please go to the COCA Website first. The first thing that I will ask you to do is sign up for an account. They honestly don't spam you. As you sign up, I will explain the purpose behind COCA:
Essentially COCA is a corpus is composed of more than 450 million words in 189,431
texts, including 20 million words each year from 1990-2012. The
corpus is evenly divided between the five genres of spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic
journals. The texts come from a variety of sources:
-
Spoken: (95 million words
[95,385,672])
-
Fiction: (90 million words
[90,344,134])
-
Popular Magazines: (95 million
words [95,564,706])
-
Newspapers: (92 million words
[91,680,966])
-
Academic Journals: (91 million words
[91,044,778])
Part II: "Playing with COCA" [3:40-4:20 (40 min)]
Online ESL Materials & COCA
Follow along with the instructor as we go through several of the worksheets together.
There is a
video for you to watch as well that takes you through the basics of using COCA.
I will also give you time to "play" with COCA and do some exploring on your own.It is a complex website and unfortunately, I am no expert. If you are interested in using this for yourself in the future, it will take some time to learn how it works. Many students, however, feel it is worth the effort in learning how to operate. Judge for yourself! :)
Part III: Reflective Essay #3 [4:20-4:35 (15 min)]
Please click
HERE to access this writing activity prompt. Please save them to your dropbox and I will review them later this week. Thank you!
Part IV: Course Closure (10 min)
-clarification of final paper requirements
-last minute student questions
-resources for future writing needs
Enjoy your winter Break! :)
