Unit 3: Making a Data-Driven Lesson

Target objectives for this unit

After completing the materials in this unit you should

have a data-driven language lesson that you can use in a classroom
have an understanding of various strategies for creating data-driven language lessons using a concordancer
choose an appropriate context to introduce data-driven language learning
be familiar with some of the various web resources that exist relating to data-driven language learning

Contexts for data-driven learning

Read a mini-lecture on the subject: Unit 3 - mini-lecture

Creating a Data-Driven Lesson

Now that you have an idea about what corpora and concordaners are and some experience interacting with them, it's time to dive into the task of lesson creation. The "Hands Dirty" exercise for this unit will be the creation of a lesson plan for a data-driven language class. So first, here are some things to take into consideration before you decide on a strategy:

Who will be doing the learning?
What level of proficiency are the learners at?
In what context will the learning take place?
What are their learning objectives?
How much/what kind of teacher involvement will there be?
Will the students interact directly with the software or will it only be used to develop materials?

Some of the answers to these questions might depend to some degree on the answers to others.