Slovene text corpora: how to gain access to the classroom?

Simon Krek and Špela Arhar

Summary:  The paper focuses on the prospects of the use of text corpora or corpus data in teaching the Slovene language. Corpora in the classroom represent an addition to the existing language description by providing up-to-date facts about real language use, indispensible for any language teaching. Furthermore, corpus data open the possibility of a different kind of thinking about language in general: they enable the learner to understand the language as a means of communication operating dynamically and democratically in the entire speaking community. As a consequence, the learner recognizes himself/herself as a member of the same community that offers diverse possible answers to language dilemmas. However, a properly trained learner can make a qualified and autonomous choice in the end. Before this kind of language instruction can be introduced into primary and secondary schools, the existence of corpora relevant for classroom use and the instruction on corpus use must be provided both for teachers and for learners. In the last section the outline of the new pedagogic corpus interface is described, which is one of the activities of the »Communication in Slovene« project.