Learning complex verb phrases using a parallel corpus

Research on corpora and their potentials for different areas of language learning have been gaining more attention in recent years. Although the use of corpora in language learning and teaching is not new, what is novel in the present study is that it demonstrates for the first time the potential of a bilingual corpus in learning both grammar and translation. The paper tries first to outline different types of corpora and concordancers, and then concentrate specifically on the application of English-Persian parallel corpus in learning the most probable translations of complex English verb phrases having no equivalent in Persian. It is interesting to see what solutions the parallel corpus would actually provide in such occasions. An experiment in this direction reveals that using parallel corpus in translation will improve the learners’ performance at least up to 45 percent. The last part of the paper discusses the various applications of such corpora in different areas of language studies.