Topical Corpus Building on Three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Facilitation of Data Driven Learning in Taiwanese High School students

Abstract

This research aims to address the language gap issue that students encounter when working on their SDGs-related tasks by building SDGs topical corpora (specifically focusing on Goal 13: Climate Action, Goal 14: Life Below Water, and Goal 15: Life on Land) using AntConc. The focus of language teaching and learning in Taiwan has shifted under the 108 curriculum, with an emphasis on developing students’ competencies and individuality. Most English teaching has transitioned from grammar drilling to a more content-based and task-based learning approach.

The tasks are designed to develop the three competencies mentioned in the 108 curriculum guidelines: cultural and global understanding, semiotics and expression, and planning, execution, innovation, and adaptation. Since these competencies are highly relevant to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, many teachers incorporate SDGs topics into tasks, particularly those related to global warming and biodiversity. However, as the need for students to research SDGs and create portfolios of problem-solving projects in English grows, their linguistic knowledge may not be sufficient to cope with the tasks they face. Moreover, most students conduct further research on SDGs in autonomous learning classes where language teachers are not available to provide immediate assistance. It is evident that students lack the proper linguistic tools to support their autonomous learning.

To address this issue, this study presents the development of three SDGs topic-focused corpora by gathering news and articles from commonly used websites by teachers and students such as National Geographic, UN News, CNN News, and BBC News. The study also explores their potential uses, including keyword and collocation searching. By discussing the creation and utilization of these corpora, we hope to provide a valuable resource for students seeking to engage with SDG topics in English.

Keywords

data-driven learning, Topical corpus building, SDGs learning, Corpus-based learning