SESSION 1C
Alexandra Garcia
Seeing the glass half-full: Using a learner corpus for development of writing skills

Abstract
This talk shows how a learner corpus of student writing at a 20 week pre-university entry level can be used to measure students’ progress and develop their writing skills. Using the freeware AntConc (Anthony, 2014), it is possible to track features of academic writing such as use of academic lexis, logical connectors or hedging. Furthermore, it can be used as a source for tasks aiming to increase students’ language awareness through a constructivist methodology.  It also explores a number of online tools that can be used independently as part of the writing process

Bio
Alexandra García is currently Associate Lecturer in Student Learning and Communication Development at the University of Sydney. She holds a B.Ed. with a major in Modern Languages from the Universidad del Atlántico in Colombia, an MA in Language Teaching and Learning from the University of Liverpool, UK, a Master of Teaching from Western Sydney University and a PhD in Linguistics from Macquarie University. With over 20 years of experience as a language teacher, she has led processes of curricular and material development and published on issues such as, development of critical reading skills, language and Ideology and Corpus Linguistics.