Title: Corpus-based approach to teaching English tenses in Slovenian tertiary education

Authors: Igor Riznar

Addresses: Faculty of Management, University of Primorska, Cankarjeva 5, 5000 Koper, Slovenia

Abstract: The article deals with a corpus-based approach to teaching the English tense system in a Slovenian tertiary institution. In addition to offering online support (Moodle) in Business English courses taught at the Faculty of Management, University of Primorska, Business English teachers rely on corpus-based approach in their efforts to provide learning support to students trying to master the English tense system. Corpus-based approach in teaching represents a shift towards a learner-centred paradigm of discovery learning which enables students to test their own hypotheses and discover their own rules in the process of the so-called data-driven learning. In addition, corpus examples also expose students to sentences and structures that they will encounter when using the language in real-life business situations. Hard and fast rules regarding English tenses should be substituted by corpus-based data-driven hypothesis testing learner-centred notions.

Keywords: management in education; blended learning; data-driven learning; British National Corpus; Slovenia; English teaching; English tenses; business English; learner-centred.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIE.2009.025271

International Journal of Management in Education, 2009 Vol.3 No.2, pp.135 - 148

Published online: 18 May 2009 *

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