General and specialised corpora to raise linguistic awareness in a language undergoing the normalisation process: academic writing in Basque [Innovation and digital technologies in Languages for Specific Purposes]

Abstract

Academic writing is challenging for many university students in any language, but it is especially difficult for students whose instruction language is still on its way to normalisation and has an unstable academic discourse, such as Basque. This paper explains how corpora can be exploited to raise these students' linguistic awareness. To that end, learning objectives are defined, corpora-based exercises are designed, and the difficulties that students overcome are observed. The focus of this paper are students of scientific and technological degrees in the courses on Basque for Academic Purposes, where they are taught how to solve lexical, grammatical, stylistic and register-related doubts. The final aim of the course is that these students become aware of the functional development of Basque, so that they contribute to it in their professional careers.