On the use of the MagyarOK open pedagogical corpus

Abstract

The article presents the open pedagogical corpus called MagyarOK A1–B2, which was built for the Hungarian as a Second Language coursebook series with the same title, to enhance the teaching and learning of the language by providing (semi-)authentic texts so that users can study the actual language use of native speakers in specific communicative contexts and situations, and to provide language patterns and models which learners can integrate into their own linguistic output. The paper first gives a brief overview of the general criteria for pedagogical corpora and presents the contents of the corpus MagyarOK, then it proposes tasks for data-driven learning based on the corpus. It is suggested, on the one hand, that data-driven tasks can contribute in several ways to language acquisition through noticing, analyzing, and awareness-raising. On the other hand, active interaction with the corpus material can help learners memorize various language patterns.