SFBS30121 Language Analysis with Corpus Data (Spring 2025)

The course is connected to the following study programs

Optional course in the Bachelor's Programme in Languages.

There must be a sufficient number of enrolled students for the course to be offered. This applies to both the course itself and across the various target languages

Absolute requirements

Students must have passed at least 60 credits in English, French, Spanish, or German.

Lecture Semester

6th semester (Spring)

The student's learning outcomes after completing the course

Knowledge

The student

• has knowledge of how language technological tools are developed and used
• has good knowledge of how corpora are structured
• has broad knowledge of how to study linguistic variation empirically through corpus data

 

Skills

The student

• can utilize digital tools in their own learning within language disciplines
• can conduct independent searches in various types of corpora
• can analyze and compare linguistic corpus data
• can formulate a research question as a basis for academic written work
• can search for relevant knowledge in different languages and familiarize themselves with relevant subject matter independently
• can write an academic text in a correct manner

 

General Competence

The student

• can demonstrate understanding of academic articles based on corpus data
• can pose relevant questions to empirical data and answer posed questions
• can discuss linguistic variation within and/or across languages
• can articulate central subject matter through an extended written assignment

Content

In this course, we work with various types of corpora, focusing on learning how they are structured and how one can search within them. We also explore the analysis of corpus data and gain an understanding of scholarly articles that utilize corpus data. We examine corpora in different languages with various academic focuses, such as discourse analysis, dialectology, or didactics. A main aim of the course is to enable students to collect linguistic corpus data themselves, formulate questions about this material, and analyze it in a written text after discussions with the tutor and fellow students.

Through reading about and exploring language empirically through already collected data, with an emphasis on variation within languages and/or comparatively across languages, students will gain more knowledge about variation and more understanding of language research and knowledge compilations based on this type of data, at the same time as they learn about language technology and the use of digital tools. Competence from this course will be useful both for research, teaching, report writing and journalism etc.

Students can choose which of their specialization languages (80 ECTS credits) they will use for their examination work.

Forms of teaching and learning

The students participate in web-based teaching (in real-time) as a whole group and in smaller groups, where they discuss and collaborate on task-solving using digital tools. Attendance in the classes is not mandatory, but it is highly beneficial to attend regularly. Students work independently and familiarize themselves with the course material posted on the learning platform. Students are encouraged to use digital tools and platforms to discuss academic questions and contribute to their own and others' improvement in the target language both during and outside of organized teaching. 

The language of instruction in the whole group is Norwegian. Guidance on assignments and semester projects is provided in English/French/Spanish/German depending on the student's language choice.

Workload

Approximately 280 hours.

Coursework requirements - conditions for taking the exam

During the semester, a mandatory assignment will be given related to the topic of the course:

• A project description that outlines how the data material for the semester assignment (exam work) will be collected and formulates the research question(s) related to the material.

Feedback on the work requirements may come partly from the course instructor and partly from other students. A more detailed description of the content of the work requirements will be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Work requirements must be approved before the student can present themselves for the exam.

Examination

Individual, written semester assignment.

Scope: 5000 words +/- 10%. A bibliography and table of contents may be included.

Grading scale A-F.

Language: English/French/Spanish/German depending on the student's language choice.

Examiners

Internal and external sensor or two internal sensors.

Course evaluation

To be able to provide current and relevant education of high quality, we rely on feedback from the students. Evaluations are conducted in accordance with the university college's quality system.

Literature

The reading list will be published in Leganto before the start of the semester.