‘Proper vocabulary and juicy collocations’: EAP students evaluate do-it-yourself corpus-building

This paper reports on the feasibility and value of an approach to teaching EAP writing in which students construct and examine their own individual, discipline-specific corpora. The approach was trialed in multidisciplinary classes of advanced-level students (mostly graduates). The course consisted of six weekly 2-h sessions. Data were collected from initial and final questionnaires, which provided background information and asked students to evaluate the corpus work. Data from 50 participants are presented and show generally positive results. Over 90% of students found it easy to build their own corpora and most succeeded in constructing a corpus of 10–15 research articles. Most students were enthusiastic about working with their own corpora: about 90% agreed that their corpus helped them improve their writing and intended to use it in the future. This suggests that even corpora of this size and type can provide a useful resource for writing discipline-specific texts. The paper discusses the data on participants’ attitudes and experiences and considers the issues and problems that arise in connection with do-it-yourself corpus-building. It argues that this approach need not be restricted to small groups of well-resourced students, but can be implemented in mainstream EAP classes.

► Students in multidisciplinary classes build their own corpora of research articles.
► Fifty writing students (most graduates) evaluate the 6 week, 12 h course.
► Students (80–90%) have positive attitudes to building and using their own corpus.
► The self-built corpora of 10–15 files are valuable for discipline-specific writing.
► Do-it-yourself corpus-building can be implemented in mainstream EAP classes.