The effects of paper-based DDL on the acquisition of lexico-grammatical patterns in L2 writing

Abstract

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At the prewriting stage, both groups were given a list of five abstract nouns: the experimental group was provided with paper-based concordance lines to study the collocations of the words, while the control group was allowed to consult dictionaries for the usage of the words. The written texts of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were analysed and compared between and within groups. The results showed that the written output by the experimental group, as compared with the control group, contained a higher variety of collocational and colligational patterns and had fewer linguistic errors in using the target abstract nouns. The post-experiment learning journals and questionnaires administered to the experimental group further confirmed that concordance activities encouraged usage-based learning, helped students notice the lexical collocations and prepositional colligations of the target words, and thus improved accuracy and complexity in their productive language. Despite these positive findings, potential problems of using concordance activities for independent learning were also reflected in the students' written output and reported in the learning journals.

Using Corpora for Error Correction in EFL Learners’ Writing

“…The questionnaire included 20 items to which the respondents were required to show their degree of agreement from completely disagree to completely agree. The majority of items were adapted from questionnaires in Yoon & Hirvela (2004) and Huang (2014). The researcher designed the remaining items specially for this study.…”

Researching Innovations in English Language Writing Instruction: A State-of-the-art Review

“…However, contrasting findings were observed in Huang's (2014) study where university English majors were generally positive with corpus and have made significant progress in the use of target lexico-grammatical patterns they learned through a paper-based corpus. The results of the two studies may suggest that corpuses are highly specialized language tools and they may be more helpful to inform language related aspects of writing such as lexicogrammatical patterns in Huang (2014), but fail to address other aspects of writing such as the legal content in Hafner and Candlin's (2007) study. Hence, it may be a better idea for students to access multiple web tools to inform different aspects of their writing.…”

Data-driven Learning in Second Language Writing Class: A Survey of Empirical Studies

“…[3] [25] [35] employing the indirect DDL approach. Yoon & Jo [23] applied both direct and indirect approach, aiming to compare the effects of corpus use on error correction, error correction patterns, and learning strategy use between the two approaches.…”

“…Boulton [3] compared the usefulness of paper-based corpus materials and traditional teaching materials in helping L2 learners to deal with typical problems in their written productions, finding that learners using corpus materials performed much better than those using dictionary entries and other traditional materials. Huang [35] made the similar comparison but mainly focused on L2 learners' lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in their writing. In this study, the experimental group was encouraged to use paper-based concordance lines while the control group was offered dictionaries to study the usage of the words.…”