Creare corpora per e con gli studenti: un’esperienza di apprendimento di un linguaggio specialistico

While it is acknowledged that a specialised corpus rather than a large general corpus may be more suitable in describing specialised language, the category “specialised” is varied and covers a multiplicity of corpora types. In an ESP teaching/learning environment the requirements for corpus construction include determining students’ needs and verifying the relevance of the selected texts for ad hoc teaching/learning activities. In this paper, we present problems related to the designing and building of a specialised corpus for teaching/learning purposes in the field of English for business management. Our paper contributes to a research perspective that explores the benefits and limits of involving students in corpus research and of using corpora as learning instruments. We observe that involving students in corpus analysis, as corpus users, may contribute to raise their awareness of their own language needs and of how a corpus may be improved and re-organized to meet such needs. In the teaching/learning experience we illustrate here, students contribution in re-designing and enlarging the specialised corpus was fundamental and, besides being a worthwhile language activity in se, helped students to get familiar with some key issues and concepts characterising the ESP discourse they were dealing with.