The role of language corpora in teaching Croatian as a second and foreign language

Posavec, Kristina. (2017). The role of language corpora in teaching Croatian as a second and foreign language. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Information Science
Department of Information Science > Chair of natural language processing, lexicography and encyclopedic science.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij informacijskih i komunikacijskih znanosti) [mentor Mikelić Preradović, Nives].

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Abstract

This dissertation explores the use of Croatian language corpora for the purpose of teaching Croatian as a second and foreign language. Based upon in-depth interviews that were conducted with language teachers of Croaticum department at Faculty of humanities and socialsciences in Zagreb, it was proven that corpus-based approach for teaching Croatian as a foreign language has a positive effect on process of preparing teaching materials and conducting classes of Croatian as a second and foreign language. By analyzing the degree of satisfaction and motivation of the class participants (learners) who worked with corpus-based materials and examples during research, it was proven that there was a need for including this type of teaching in the educational process, because it increased interest and motivation of the learners for new ways of learning and apprehending Croatian language. The thesis found that most language teachers do not use corpus or corpus tools for the preparation of their teaching materials nor do they use it in direct work with learners, because of a lack of knowledge of using computer corpora which requires above average computer skills. This research has shown that educating language teachers about the use of corpus and corpus tools is the most effective way of integrating corpus-based approach for teaching Croatian as a foreign language, because teachers are more inclined to use it in their work with students after they have acquired the needed knowledge and skills. Corpus-based approach for teaching Croatian as a foreign language has proven to be a more time consuming in process of preparing teaching classes. Although, the teachers agree that using corpora is a more practical for getting insight into a large number of examples for authentic language as well as a simpler insight into frequency lists and collocations. Furthermore, it is proven that corpus is a great source for large number of examples for the language in use, because by using corpus teachers have no need to make up examples on their own. Also, it is important to establish cooperation between teachers and scientists who are involved in process of making and annotation of corpora, because teachers have direct insight into the needs of learners, the process of making the curriculum and the methods of learning Croatian language, while the scientists may give the teachers insight on how the corpus works and how they can search it. Together they can create quality learning material which will make teacher's preparation for class easier and student's language learning process simpler. Based on the questionnaire survey and thorough in-depth interviews with teachers of Croatian as a second and foreign language as well as analysis of opinions and degree of satisfaction of foreign learners of Croatian language, this dissertation presents a model of corpus-based approach for Croatian language which provides guidelines for a faster and easier process of incorporating Croatian corpuses and its tools into everyday work of Croatian language teachers.

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