Application of British National Corpus to the Teaching and Learning of Synonyms in English Language in Some Selected Higher Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper highlights the potential benefits of software application to teaching and learning of synonymy in higher education. Synonymy is often misconstrued as a ubiquitous area of knowledge among language teachers and learners. However, further scrutiny reveals limitless possibilities which teachers appear to have taken for granted, especially in their use of technology in the teaching process. The research methodology comprises questionnaires administered to English language teachers in selected schools. Linguistic data was collected from the British National Corpus (BNC) using search words which are near synonyms (as taught in schools) to investigate the relatedness of these words. The outcome indicates significant differences in the results of synonyms generated on BNC compared with those taught by teachers in the classrooms. The study showed that using ICT in language teaching and learning has potential and valuable evidence to show that the adoption of software to concepts in English language teaching and learning is an opportunity to acquire new technology and enhance the pleasure of learning. The increased learning possibilities which the adoption of ICT in this way will engender have transformative potentials in teaching and learning English in Higher Education.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n2p357