Abstract. Multi-word sequences (MWSs) have been found to occur with high frequency in academic writing [2,25]. MWSs are recurrent expressions, which a writer retrieves from his/her long-term memory in order to construct utterances. In written discourse, such MWSs serve to refer the reader to previous research, organize the sections of texts and discourse within them and position the writer as knowledgeable [2,3]. Previous research suggests that L2 writers frequently misuse these forms, resulting in disfluent written discourse [8,20,23]. Nevertheless, Hyland [14] suggests that use of appropriate and sophisticated MWSs helps to establish the writer as a member of an academic discourse community. The current, corpus-based and quasi-experimental study investigates the effectiveness of using Data Driven Learning (DDL) in conjunction with teaching MWSs. Key MWSs have been selected from Simpson-Vlach and Ellis' [25] Academic Formulas List (AFL), specifically from the Referential Function and two sub-categories of the Stance Function, Hedges and Epistemic Stance. The researcher used an objective pretest-posttest to ascertain how DDL affects students' receptive knowledge of AFL-MWSs and used the first and final drafts of an argumentative essay to assess students' ability to produce them. A statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest scores for the treatment group supports the assertion that DDL positively impacts students' receptive knowledge of AFL-MWSs. Discussion includes comparison between students' self-generated inductions regarding each AFL-MWSs and how they used them within their essays.
Vivid phrasal Idioms (VP Idioms), meaning non-compositional, figurative phrases such as "spill the beans," occur frequently in English, particularly in conversation [23]. They occur also in the presentational mode, as exemplified by newscasts and political speeches. Yet research suggests that course books for ELLs inadequately address idioms [16,19,20]. The current study investigates the effects of exposing learners to VP Idioms in an authentic audiovisual context as recommended by previous research [9,19,20,22]. The authentic context used in this study features U.S. Representative Ocasio-Cortez narrating a story that explains the Green New Deal, a plan which mandates an aggressive course of action to combat Global Climate Change. The instructional intervention and data collection took place within one in-tact classroom, wherein the participants passed through both the experimental (authentic context) and control conditions. Participants accessed an instructional website for images and definitions of the six key VP Idioms, three each for the control and experimental phases. Then they viewed "A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez" [17] and read the associated script. Student-written dialogues, each of which contain one of the key VP Idioms, were the main data source. Results and pedagogical implications will be discussed.
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