Exploring Teachers' Initial Perceptions of Corpus Linguistics and Their Readiness to Incorporate Corpora in Classroom Instruction: A Qualitative Analysis

The integration of corpora into language teaching appears to be lacking, raising the question of whether this omission is due to teachers intentionally choosing not to use corpora in their classes or a lack of awareness and knowledge about these tools. This study of teachers in Indonesia aimed to explore two research questions: (a) what are the teachers' initial perceptions regarding corpus linguistics, and (b) do the teachers intend to integrate corpora into classroom instruction? Fifteen secondary and tertiary-level teachers participated in this qualitative study. Researchers gave the teachers a brief presentation on corpora to develop their Corpus Literacy (CL) and understand its relevance to their teaching intentions. The research team then conducted focus groups to collect data from the participants. The study results indicated positive initial perceptions of corpora among the teachers and demonstrated that they could quickly acquire corpus literacy. However, to promote a stronger interest in integrating corpora in teaching, corpus literacy needs to be bolstered by additional resources, including technological capabilities, the skills of both students and teachers, and sufficient time. This study offers several pedagogical insights for corpus linguists, website developers, and teacher educators to enhance the successful integration of corpora in language teaching.