Effects of Using Corpus-Based Instructional Mediation on EFL Students’ Academic Writing Skills Improvement

Abstract

This study aimed at examining the effects of corpus-based instructional mediation on EFL learners’ academic writing skills improvement. To conduct the research, a quasi-experimental research design was employed. A total of 72 EFL mechanical engineering students participated in the study, and they were selected through a simple random sampling technique. Among them, 25 students were assigned to the experimental group and 47 students to the control group. The data were gathered by means of pre- and post-tests. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to observe the statistical differences between the control and the experimental groups in their academic writing skills. The results showed that the students who were instructed through corpus-based instructional mediation outperformed than the students who were instructed in the conventional instructional approach. Particularly, the students who participated in the experimental group improved their content, communicative achievement, organization, grammar, and vocabulary usage than the students who participated in the control group. Therefore, this research calls for inclusion of corpus-based authentic linguistic elements in their teaching material when teaching academic writing courses in the EFL context.

Corpus Used as a Data-Driven Learning Tool in L2 Academic Writing: Evidence From Turkish Contexts

“…This study showed that corpus use did not have an impact on improving learners' content, organization, and mechanics. The existing literature, on the other hand, provided evidence that corpora can be an effective reference tool for improving content and organization (Birhan et al, 2021), and punctuation marks (Celik & Ekatmis, 2013). The conflicting results could be derived from differences in the study designs, participant backgrounds, or the specific instructional methods employed in each study.…”

Developing engineering students’ engagement in academic writing classes using corpus-based instruction

“…The activities are designed from the corpus data that are assembled. Recently, researchers (e.g., Birhan, et al, 2021;Casan-Pitrach & Calvo-Ferrer, 2015;Huang, 2012) studied the impact of Birhan and Nurie Asian. J.…”

“…EFL writing classes have been characterized by the prevalence of teaching practices with less significant linguistic features that are not used frequently in their field of study, and these challenged learners to communicate effectively and construct various academic texts (Birhan et al, 2021). These indicate that the wrong teaching practices have contributed to the lack of engagement in the teaching-learning processes.…”