The advent of language corpora in the second half of the 20th century has left virtually no domain of linguistics untouched. This is partly because, apart from constituting an object of research, they also (if controversially) represent a methodology for linguistic enquiry. As such, they can be applied in any text-based field from cultural studies to literature, and even for learning purposes as long as the learner is put in the position of 'researcher' in what Johns (1990) has called "data-driven learning". Though DDL is most closely associated with language learning, the main interest of corpora for language learners may be as a reference resource in producing and revising written texts, including for translation purposes - indeed, considerable work has been conducted on the use of corpora in dedicated translation degrees especially using parallel corpora (e.g. Beeby et al. 2009). Less has been made of corpora in the ubiquitous translation courses of general undergraduate language degrees (cf. Zanettin 2009), though the advantages frequently attributed to corpus consultation are likely to apply here too. This paper explores the first corpus steps of 3rd-year English undergraduates in France. The students have no previous experience of corpus use, and the distance context limits the opportunities for training as well as access to corpora and tools. In their French-English translation course, they are required to use the free, stable, simple interface to monolingual English corpora (up to 450M words) provided by Mark Davies at http://corpus.byu.edu. The site is suitable for novice users and is accompanied by tutorials and help features; this is highly desirable in the distance teaching context where face-to-face input is not an option, and means that the course itself can keep the introduction to the basic concepts and techniques to a minimum. After that, the constraints of the distance context play to the strengths of constructivism as the students explore the corpora on their own; though email support is always available, and there are discussion forums to facilitate peer-to-peer collaboration, these are generally underused. Following an earlier pilot study (Author 2012), the results presented here derive from an on-line evaluation where the methodology component requires the students to choose sections of a previously unseen text and demonstrate and explain how they use corpora to solve the problems encountered in context. This type of 'languaging' (e.g. Swain 2006) draws on linguistic knowledge, self-awareness and translation competence, thereby constituting a useful learning technique for students as well as providing valuable insights into their underlying thinking. The data show how the students come to grips with linguistic corpora for translation, allowing both a quantitative analysis of the functions used and a qualitative analysis of individual processes and outcomes. The findings are backed up by questionnaires submitted at the end of the course to gain feedback from both successful and less successful students. Particular attention is accorded to two issues. Firstly, these corpora were originally created primarily for linguistic research purposes - how well do they cross the divide for use in translation and language learning? Secondly, although the students are majoring in English, they have little training in 'linguistics' - what linguistic difficulties do these students encounter in using such corpora in translation? References Author. 2012. Beyond concordancing: Multiple affordances of corpora in university language degrees. Languages, Cultures and Virtual Communities. Elsevier Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 34: 33-38. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18770428/34 Beeby, A., P. Rodríguez Inés & P. Sánchez-Gijón (eds). 2009. Corpus Use and Translating: Corpus Use for Learning to Translate and Learning Corpus Use to Translate. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Johns, T. 1990. From printout to handout: Grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning. CALL Austria, 10: 14-34. Swain, M. 2006. Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced language proficiency. In H. Byrnes (ed.), Advanced Language Learning: The Contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky. London: Continuum, p. 95-108. Zanettin, F. 2009. Corpus-based translation activities for language learners. Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 3(2): 209-224.
