A key role of EFL teachers has traditionally been as prescribers of correct language. Indeed, an accurate command of English is seen as a reflection of a teacher’s professional competence. According to Owen (1996), hesitation when describing language may be perceived by students as a lack of understanding. Although providing manageable explanations to students on the spot seems central to the teacher’s role, an ever-burgeoning body of research indicates that much of our intuition about language is actually unreliable (Sinclair, 1991; Stubbs, 1996; Meijs, 1996; McEnery, Xiao & Tono, 2006), suggesting students’ faith in their teachers, and indeed teachers’ confidence in their own intuition, may be misplaced. By analysing teachers’ intuition-based linguistic explanations to their students against corpus evidence, the results of this study indicate that intuition is in fact remarkably accurate. However, the results also suggest that students are being denied important information about certain aspects of the language

1. Can you really trust
your intuition?
Bob Ashcroft
Waseda University
JALT 2010 International Conference, Nagoya
Saturday 20th November

2. What’s the difference
between actually
and in fact?

3. 1. Intuition & Teaching
2. Research
3. Results
4. Recommendations
5. Questions

4.  Prescribers of “correct” language
 Students see ambiguity / hesitation as incompetence
(Owen 1996)
 Native speakers best judge of what can and cannot be said
(Hunston and Laviosa 2001).
 Intuition at the heart of traditional linguistic analysis
(Stubbs 1996).

5.  Intuition is unreliable
(Sinclair 1991, Owen 1995, Stubbs 1996, Meijs 1996, McEnery et al 2006)
 Intuition is unsuitable for teaching materials development
(Biber et al 1994, Kennedy 1998, Gilmore: 2004 , O'Keefe et al 2007)
 Which of a semantically related pair of items to use is the
most common student question to teachers (Tsui 2005)
 Such decisions are complex
(Sinclair 1991, Partington 1998)

6.  What impromptu information do teachers give?
 How accurate are these intuitive accounts?
 How comprehensive are they?
 How useful are they for students?
 Comparison of corpus data + teachers’ intuition

7.  e-mail
 35 EFL German/Japanese university teachers
 Teachers were asked to explain differences between
actually and in fact as they might in class
 Consulting only their intuition

8.  Bank of English
 Birmingham University
 Over 450 million words
 Word-based analysis
 KWIC Concordance and frequency data

9. Linguistic Feature Examples of what teachers said
Function Actually is used to give additional information.
Frequency Actually is more common than in fact.
Register Actually is more casual than in fact.
Use with Statistics In fact is used with statistics.
Sentence Position In fact occurs at the start of a sentence.

10. Frequency of Linguistic Points Made
Linguistic
Feature
in fact actually
Function 14 18
Frequency 9 11
Register 14 14
Use with statistics 1 0
Sentence position 1 1
39 44

11. Teachers' Intuition
More direct, starker contrast is provided by using in fact.
Actually has a meaning of opposing, refusing or correcting what
someone has said.
 Highlighting Contrast

12. Corpus Data
These methods claim to work with feelings but actually do not.
Pfeiffer's is not, in fact, a perfect face; her mouth is
asymmetrical and the upper lip bee-stung.
 Highlighting Contrast

13. Teachers’ in fact actually
Intuition highlighting contrast highlighting contrast
giving additional information giving additional information
not used with bad news introducing bad news
introducing unexpected news introducing unexpected news
indicating the present
Corpus Data in fact actually
highlighting contrast highlighting contrast
giving additional information giving additional information
not used with bad news introducing bad news
giving factual information giving factual information
expressing incredulity

14. Teachers’ Intuition
Some teachers said that in fact was generally less common
than actually.
Corpus Data
in fact actually
Freq. Per million Freq. Per million
2118 3834

15. Teachers’ Intuition
In fact, is rarely used by myself or my friends in everyday
conversation . Maybe I would use in fact more often in written
English than spoken.
Corpus Data
in fact actually
Written / Spoken
Freq. Per million Freq. Per million
Spoken Corpora 973 2593
Written Corpora 1145 1241

16. Teachers’ Intuition
Some teachers said that actually is more casual, and that in fact
is more formal.
Corpus Data
in fact actually
Written / Spoken
Freq. Per million Freq. Per million
Spoken Corpora 973 2593
Written Corpora 1145 1241

17. Teachers’ Intuition
One teacher said that in fact is often used with statistics.
Corpus Data
in fact actually
Use with a % of sample concordances % of sample concordances
Statistic
7 0

18. Teachers’ Intuition
One teacher said that in fact is more likely to be found at the
beginning of a sentence than actually.
Corpus Data
in fact actually
Sentence Head % %
Position
56 2

19.  Teachers did not mention the likelihood of occurrence.
 Teachers did not mention a connection between
sentence head position and function.
 48 of the 56 sample concordances with in fact at the
sentence head were instances of expanding ideas.
 Intuition lacks the detail offered by the corpus.

20. None of the respondents in the survey talked about
grammatical patterns.

21. few + n + ACTUALLY + v
Few Americans actually thought Mr. Bush won the debate.
be +adj +to +ACTUALLY +v
Can you imagine being able to actually read Pushkin in Russian?
without +ACTUALLY + v-ing
The Chancellor can mention this without actually doing anything about it.

22. Intuition / Corpus
Linguistic Feature Match
Function high
general high
Frequency
detailed -
Register high
general high
Collocation
specific -
Sentence position high
Grammatical patterns -

23.  Teachers‘ intuitive accounts are mostly accurate.
 Teachers are concerned mostly with the function of words.
 Teachers restrict explanations to the limits of their intuition.
 Students are missing out on information for detailed
frequencies and grammatical patterning.

24. Teachers should use intuition to describe:
Different uses and senses of words
Collocational tendencies with sets of items
Typical sentence positioning of words
Register
General comparative frequencies

25. Teachers should avoid using intuition to describe:
Relative frequencies of various functions or patterns
associated with an item
Grammatical patterns
Instead, corpus-driven approaches could be used:
DDL (Data Driven Learning)

26. Data-Driven Learning (DDL)
In DDL classes, students need not rely on teachers for intuitive
language description because they are asked to draw their own
conclusions about language patterns based on corpus data .
(Johns 1991).

27. Teacher Development Learner Training
• Linguistic areas suitable for • Linguistic areas available to
intuitive explanation teachers‘ intuition
• Corpus-driven teaching methods • How to use corpus data
Access to Corpora
• Wider availability of associated technology
• Investment from educational institutions

28. Bob Ashcroft
Waseda University
b.ashcroft@kurenai.waseda.jp