Serendipity Expanded Exploring new directions for discovery learning

Serendipity Expanded Exploring new directions for discovery learning Silvia Bernardini School for Translators and Interpreters University of Bologna Forlì - Italy silvia@sslmit. unibo. it

Discovery learning - 1 The highlights • • The learner: a traveller (vs. a researcher) The teacher: a guide (vs. an instructor) The corpus: a stimulus (vs. an oracle) The aim: the development of “capacity” (rather than competence)

Discovery learning - 2 Concordancing large corpora Advantages size and variety initial enthusiasm, confidence Disadvantages limited decreasing interest, frustration, reference use

DL: New directions Idea: Combine different corpora and corpus analysis tools Objectives: Increase chances of serendipitous encounters (motivation) Raise the learners’ consciousness • intertextuality (Seidlhofer 2000) • scope of observations (applicability and variability)

The occasion • 4 th year research seminar In preparation for their final dissertation • Schedule 10 weekly meetings (1 h 30 m) • Status: Perceived as an extra burden Very heavy compulsory work load and attendance requirements

The students • • 10 (volunteers) All translators-to-be Good command of English Little familiarity with corpora and software (both theory and practice)

The ground to be covered • Familiarising the participants with available corpus tools • Bringing home to them a different view of language use patterning vs. slot-and-filler • Offering chances to experience DL. . . • …and to apply all the above to translation and/or language learning/teaching tasks

The corpora The BNC-Imag The BNC Sampler The Rushdie Monolingual Corpus and The Rushdie Parallel Corpus (Zanettin 2000) A home-made fiction comparable corpus (ITA -ENG)

How we got on - 1 1 Introduction: The phraseological viewpoint Mother tongue examples, foreign language exercises 2 Investigating phraseology with a large corpus (BNC) (high) standard(s) 3 From Cat. Ref queries to “specialised” corpora extremely high

How we got on - 2 4 Using different corpora to understand texts Chapter 1 of S. Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh 5 Using different corpora to translate texts and evaluate translations monolingual (gen & spec), parallel and comparable corpora 6 Assignments Either translate ch. 1 of Rushdie’s novel Grimus or give a presentation on phraseology from a corpus linguistics perspective to students of the “English language pedagogy” course

What the students said - 1 • They liked the idea of being in charge, of feeling competent (it does not often happen); • rapidly appreciated the relevance to their concerns as future translators and teachers; • independently started to reflect on their mother tongue as well as the foreign language; • answered questions that had not been tackled directly in class (is this approach relevant for high school teachers/students? How can it be adapted? )

What the students said - 2 • They wished they had more time • Frustration 1: if things are the way we presented them, one can never stop learning the language • Frustration 2: once you realise the way the language works, you are not confident in your output/intuition anymore

Desiderata • Complement this DL experience with more text-based and student-centred work (e. g. Seidlhofer’s approach) • Repeat the same experience with a reference corpus for Italian and less disparate translational resources • The CEXI Corpus