Data-driven learning: From Collins Cobuild Dictionary to ChatGPT

Abstract

The invitation to speak at this conference on corpora and data-driven language learning (DDL) at COSEDI, the University of Grenoble, was received at the beginning of February 2023. ChatGPT had been released on 30 November 2022 and it was already becoming obvious that this technology would present revolutionary opportunities and challenges for corpus applications to language learning. Through a limited number of case studies - the Collins Cobuild Dictionary, a data-driven workshop for academic writing for research students, and the replication of the tasks used in the workshop, using ChatGPT - this presentation selectively highlights the trajectory of DDL from its beginnings to the present day and takes a look into a possible future with large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT.