Detail
Abstract
This seminar examines the synergistic relationship between Corpus Linguistics and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), highlighting their impactful collaboration while acknowledging both their potential and limitations. The central focus is the development of an innovative AI-powered platform, CorpusChat, which provides customized GPTs tailored for university students to enhance their discipline-specific academic writing skills. By integrating Corpus Linguistics with GenAI, CorpusChat combines two data-centric domains, facilitating a deeper understanding of authentic language use and simplifying corpus searches without requiring extensive technical expertise. These specialized chatbots are designed to analyze language patterns within discipline-specific corpora, addressing the unique needs of academic writing in various fields. The distinct features of CorpusChat help mitigate common concerns associated with GenAI, such as accuracy, reliability, and hallucinations.
Supported by a teaching development grant at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), a total of six discipline-specific chatbots were created utilizing academic texts across the disciplines of Arts and Humanities, Dentistry, Science, Social Sciences, Medicine, and Nursing, totaling nearly 7 million words. Students from different levels (undergraduate and postgraduate) and across diverse disciplines at HKU utilized different chatbots on CorpusChat to acquire academic and disciplinary and interdisciplinary vocabulary and linguistic features.
Building on the student survey and focus group interviews, a number of suggestions for pedagogy are presented, looking at how GenAI and corpus linguistics can bridge the gap by offering more innovative English language learning opportunities for students across disciplines. Some practical observations about how to enhance CorpusChat for learning English across disciplines and point to further avenues of research will also be provided.
About the Speaker(s)
Dr. Lisa Cheung is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Applied English Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She holds a BA in Translation and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Hong Kong, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, UK. Her main research interests include corpus linguistics, data-driven learning, and English for Specific Purposes. She has a track record of success in both research publications and grant applications (a total of four completed and two on-going research funded projects). Her first co-authored book on understanding the language of dentistry is a proof of research-informed pedagogical practices in the Dentistry course that she had coordinated for over 10 years (e.g. additional course module on ‘hedging’ in response to research findings). Her recent TDG project is exploring strategic ways of transforming disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning with corpus-driven GenAI chatbots.