Abstract
The potential of corpora for language learning and teaching has been widely acknowledged and their ready
availability on the Web has facilitated access for a broad range of users, including language teachers and learners. However,
the integration of corpora into general language learning and teaching practice has so far been disappointing. In this paper,
I will argue that the shape of many existing corpora, designed with linguistic research goals in mind, clashes with pedagogic
requirements for corpus design and use. Hence, a ‘pedagogic mediation
of corpora’ is required (cf. Widdowson, 2003). I will also show that the realisation of this requirement touches on
both the development of appropriate corpora and the ways in which they are exploited by learners and teachers. I will use a
small English Interview Corpus (ELISA) to outline possible solutions for a pedagogic mediation. The major aspect of this is the
combination of two approaches to the analysis and exploitation of a pedagogically relevant corpus: a corpus-based and a
discourse-based approach.