FLAX: Flexible and open corpus-based language collections development

This case study has been written as an introductory guide for teachers who are interested in learning what Open Educational Resource (OER) options and practices (OEP) are available to them for developing and distributing online domain-specific language materials for uses in academic and professional settings. We present innovative work in open corpus-based language collections building with the open-source multilingual FLAX language project as a running example of open materials development practices for language teaching and learning. We present language-learning contexts from across formal and informal language learning, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and language translation studies. We are particularly concerned with closing the gap in language teacher training where competencies in materials development are still dominated by print-based proprietary course book publications, which in many cases do not reflect salient findings from the research into domain-specific language. We are also concerned with the growing gap in language teaching practitioner competencies for understanding important issues of copyright and licensing that are changing rapidly in the context of digital and web literacy developments. These key issues are being largely ignored in the informal language teaching practitioner discussions, both by experienced and new language tutors, and in the formal research into teaching and materials development practices.