ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the application of corpora and corpus-based approaches in developing teaching materials for language learners (of English, in this case). Specifically, this chapter synthesizes suggestions and ideas for materials development, as well as challenges and limitations for using corpora in materials design in the domain of Aviation English (AE). AE serves as a focal domain to show how corpus-based materials, especially informed by Data-Driven Learning (DDL) approaches, provide students measurable gains in learning aviation-specific vocabulary. A presentation and discussion of materials and lessons are provided, highlighting an analysis of specialized corpora of aviation texts. The corpus approach to researching the distributional features and patterns of English benefits teachers as they create materials used to facilitate the learning and acquisition of target vocabulary and various communicative forms and functions of the language. The number of teachers incorporating corpus-based materials in their classrooms has grown exponentially from the mid-1990s, with more internet-based tools and corpus databases becoming readily available in the classroom and beyond. However, many are still not regularly using corpus-based activities in their classrooms, especially in AE, for a variety of reasons, including a lack of confidence in the methodology, time constraints, difficulty learning and accessing tools, questions of relevance, and the challenges in orienting their students and re-designing their courses to incorporate corpus-based approaches (Friginal, 2018).
