KUCHING – A lecture-cum-workshop on corpus grammar will be held at Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus on 6 February.
The half-day event, which runs from 2:30pm to 5:30pm, will be conducted by renowned academic Professor Tony T.N. Hung, who is Honorary Professor of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and an Adjunct Professor in the Linguistics Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Hung will explain the importance of the use of up-to-date computerized corpora for the proper description and teaching of grammar, given today’s emphasis on real, authentic English in context rather than the arbitrary prescriptions of traditional grammars.
The one-hour lecture will be followed by a one-and-a-half hour workshop which will demonstrate the use of two online corpora, in British and American English, to search for and analyse data on any given lexical or grammatical structure in English.
There will be hands-on practice sessions and participants are advised to bring along laptops, iPads or any hand-held device.
The lecture, organised by Swinburne Sarawak’s Faculty of Language and Communication, will be the first of a series on English and language teaching Hung will conduct at the university this year. His lectures are specially designed for university and school teachers, bachelor’s and master’s degree students of English, and individuals who have an interest in new developments in the English language and the teaching of English.
Hung, a former head of the Language Centre at the HKBU, holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of California San Diego, an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Lancaster, and a BA (Hons) in English from McMaster University.
His publications include eight books and over 90 journal articles, book chapters and conference presentations in the fields of World Englishes, English grammar, phonology, language teaching, and Chinese linguistics.
Registration fee for the lecture-cum-workshop is RM20. The closing date is 5 February.
For more information and registration details, please email Dayang Norasikin Binti Abang Talhata atntalhata@swinburne.edu.my, or Irene Chang at ihcchang@swinburne.edu.my