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CoRoLA reference corpus for the contemporary Romanian language

Date of Publication

2014

Target Group

Lecturers
Students

Domain Area

Arts & Music
Business & Communication
Engineering
Journalism & multimedia
Law
Medicine & Nursing
Tourism

Learning Scenario

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Target Language

Romanian

Language of Instruction

Any language

CEFR level

B1
B2
C1
C2

Type of Material

Reference resources (online Dictionaries/ grammar guides/phrasebooks)

Linguistic Features

Skills

Speaking
Writing
Reading

Description

CoRoLA is a reference corpus for contemporary Romanian language consisting of texts form various domains produced by native speakers of Romanian. Therefore, the level of difficulty may vary. The interface is easy to handle, yet students need introduction to how to make queries, which is provided by several online tutorials. Queries are not limited to vocabulary, they can include grammar forms, phraseology; there is also an oral section (Oral Coral Corpus Query) which provides the pronunciation of the lexical material. The technical solutions are typical for a corpus of this type.

Case study

The resource as such can be used for the teaching of specialized vocabulary, but is not associated with any elements of grammar/structure, which limits the possible uses of this resource. It can only be used by students with already well developed specialized vocabulary and at least basic knowledge of grammar, so the level of B1 indicated in the file may be too optimistic. It would require rather intensive preparatory activities for the lecturer and the students cannot use it independently. An upside is the digital format, which allows various levels of interaction of the student with the material, as well as the presence of the visuals, which create better associations between the concepts and the specialized vocabulary and support the process of acquiring the Romanian form. Some form of audio support would increase the value of the resource.

Guidelines

Please describe how the resource was used/could be used successfully, the results achieved and the risks to be taken into account while using the resource
Reading comprehension, specialized vocabulary, level B2-C1
1. Warm up activity Announce the title Emergencies in dentistry/ Urgențe stomatologice, elicit from students the basic definition of the term and other terms related to the topic and the recommended medical treatment. List the terms, add others if necessary;
2. announce the activity related to the term abces; make sure the students know the inflected forms of the term (sg/pl, definite article, case forms);
3. Give the students two definitions of abces and ask them to identify which of them is related to dentistry (sources: dentistry https://dentocare.ro/dictionar-stomatologic/, https://medclub.eu/articole/abces-definitie-clasificare/)
4. Present three excerpts (adapted, if necessary) extracted from CoRoLa and where the term abces (abscess) is used and ask student to identify those where terms related to an emergency in dentistry are present and not in another field.
a. Ar fi trebuit să-mi îngrijesc caria la vreme și nu să ajung la abces și apoi la extracție.
b. Ecografia sau tomografia computerizată evidențiază lichid liber în cavitatea peritoneală, calculi sau abces.
c. Tubulii dentinari sunt căi de pătrundere a florei microbiene spre pulpa dentară ducând în prima faza la inflamarea acesteia (pulpita), ulterior la necroză și gangrenă .
d. În funcție de gradul de confort al medicului, se poate face anestezie locală sau radiculară, incizie și drenaj al abcesului.
5. Ask students to identify/underline the keywords that helped them establish the field (related terms); discuss the relation to the term abces;
6. Ask students to use the corpus to identify another example where the term abces is used in relation to dentistry; ask peers to say if they think the example is correct or not;
7. Ask students to insert the term abces where suitable, miniding the correct form (singular/plural):
Examinează, stabilesc a. _____ și efectuează tratamentul cariilor dentare. Efectuează b._____ de mică chirurgie stomatologica (extracții de dinți, incizii de c. _____ dentare) (correct answer c.)
the results achieved
– enhance specialized vocabulary in authentic contexts
the risks to be taken into account while using the resource
– users need some amount of instruction in order to use the interface at acceptable speed
– some examples may belong to (sub)domains not known to students or to general language (non-literal use)

Review

Category
Rate
Comprehensive approach
Capacity to match the needs of lecturers and students

4

Added value
The provided tangible improvements

4

Motivation enhancement
The capacity to motivate students to improve their language skills

4

Innovation
Effectiveness in introducing innovative, creative and previously unknown approaches to LSP learning

5

Transferability
Measurement of the transferable potential and possibility to be a source of further capitalisation/application for other language projects in different countries

2

Skills assessment and validation
Availability of appropriate tools for lecturers to monitor students’ progress and for students to assess own progress and to reflect on learning

3

Adaptability
Flexibility of the contents and possibilities for the LSP lecturers to adapt the contents to their and to students’ need

3

Usability
Assess the technical usability from the point of view of the lecturer and the student

4

Accessibility
Assess the accessibility from the point of view of the lecturer and the student

5

Comments:
The corpus provides examples of real use of the language by the speakers’ community and can be used (in class or autonomously) to enhance the students’ awareness of the native use of language. The corpus can be used especially by students in Law, which is the largest subcorpus, to check their use of various specialized terms in context; the speciality of each subcorpus is easy to identify. Technically it is relatively (although not very) easy to use, it is free, it has tutorials and manuals. Lecturers can use examples extracted from the corpus to check specialised vocabulary by creating various type of exercises (e.g. fill-in exercises) and tests (fill-in, multiple choice, reading comprehension). The text are produced after 1989, thus providing samples of genuine contemporary Romanian; one of the declared purposes of the corpus is language learning and knowledge extraction. They cover four main domains texts re organized according to domains (Arts&Culture, Nature, Science, Society) which are further classified in 70 subdomains.
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