Corpus-based Instruction of Gerunds and Infinitives: The Case of EFL Learners

Zainab Alsuhaibani

Abstract


The last decades witnessed the significant impact of using corpora on linguistics and language education. Particularly, the introduction of the direct application of corpora and Data-Driven Learning (DDL) has brought helpful tools in learning and teaching languages. This study investigated the effect of using corpora on teaching the confusing grammatical constructs, gerunds and infinitives, to EFL students. Further, the study  explored EFL students’ perceptions of using corpora in learning grammar. The study adopted a mixed method research design involving a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. A proficiency test and pre- and post-tests were administered to 89 sophomore EFL students. Further, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to explore EFL students’ perceptions of using corpora in learning grammar. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between the control and experimental groups in favor for the group that received corpus-based instruction of gerunds and infinitives. In addition, the results showed students’ positive perceptions of the use of corpora in learning grammar. The study concluded with some recommendations for ELT instructors and curriculum designers.

 

Keywords: grammar; EFL; DDL; corpora; corpus; gerunds; infinitives; instruction


Full Text:

PDF

References


Abdul-Ameer, M. A. (2019). Corpora in the EFL classroom: Exploring the effects of data driven learning (DDL) on Iraqi EFL freshmen's grammatical development. Journal of Basra researches for Human Sciences, 44(4-B).

Adel, A. (2010).Using corpora to teach academic writing: Challenges for the direct approach. In M. Campoy-Cubillo, B. Belles-Fortuño & L. Gea-Valor (eds.), Corpus-based approaches to English language teaching (pp. 39-55). London: Continuum.

Aijmer, K. (Ed.). (2009). Corpora and language teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Barnbrook, G. (1996). Language and computers: A practical introduction to the computer analysis of language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Bernardini, S. (2002). Exploring new directions for discovery learning. In B. Kettemann & G. Marko (Eds.), Teaching and learning by doing corpus analysis (pp. 165-182). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Binkai, J. (2012) An empirical study on corpus-driven English vocabulary learning in China. English Language Teaching ,5 (4) 131-137.

Boulton, A. (2012) Language awareness and medium-term benefits of corpus Consultation. In Gimeno Sanz, A. (ed.), New Trends in Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Working Together (pp. 39-46.). Madrid: Macmillan.

Boulton, A. (2012). Hands-on/hands-off: Alternative approaches to data-driven learning. In Input, process and product: Developments in teaching and language corpora (pp. 152-168). Masarykova univerzita.

Boulton, A. (2012). Hands-on / hands-off: Alternative approaches to data-driven learning. In J. Thomas & A. Boulton (eds), Input, Process and Product: Developments in Teaching and Language Corpora. Brno: Masaryk University Press, p. 152-168

Boulton, A., & Cobb, T. (2017). Corpus use in language learning: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 67(23), 48–393.

Braun, S. (2005) From pedagogically relevant corpora to authentic language learning contents. ReCALL, 17(1): 47-64.

Burton, G. (2022). What can a corpus tell us about grammar teaching materials?. In The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics (pp. 358-370). Routledge

Camiciottoli, B. (2010) Corpus-informed approach to teaching lecture comprehension skills in English for business studies. In M. Campoy-Cubillo, B. Belles-Fortuño & L. Gea-Valor (eds.). Corpus-based Approaches to English Language Teaching (pp. 95-107). London: Continuum.

Chalabian, F. (2020). ESL textbooks materials and real language use: Comparing corpus-based materials and textbook materials on gerunds/infinitives (Doctoral dissertation, Carleton University).

Chambers, A. (2019). Towards the corpus revolution? Bridging the research–practice gap. Language Teaching, 52(4), 460-475.

Cheng, W. (2010). Hong Kong engineering corpus: Empowering professionalism-training to learn the language of their profession. In M. Campoy-Cubillo, B. Belles-Fortuño & L. Gea-Valor (eds.). Corpus-based Approaches to English Language Teaching (pp. 67-79). London: Continuum.

Dörnyei, Z., & Taguchi, T. (2009). Questionnaires in second language research: Construction, administration, and processing. Routledge.

Duffley, P., & Fisher, R. (2021). To‐Infinitive and Gerund‐Participle Clauses with the Verbs Dread and Fear. Studia Linguistica, 75(1), 72-96.

Elsherbini, S. A. H., & Ali, A. D. (2017). The effects of corpus-based activities on EFL university students’ grammar and vocabulary and their attitudes toward corpus. Journal of Research in Curriculum Instruction and Educational Technology, 3(1), 133-161.

Gavioli, L. (2001). The learner as researcher: Introducing corpus concordancing in the classroom. In Aston, G. (Ed.), Learning with corpora (pp. 1000–1130). Athelstan/Bologna.

Girgin, U. (2011). Corpus-based activities at lower levels of EFL proficiency: The effectiveness of using concordance lines on grammar learning (Master's thesis, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü).

Granath, S. (2009). Who benefits from learning how to use corpora? In K. Aijmer (Ed.), Corpora and language teaching (pp. 47-65). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Granger, S. (2015). The contribution of learner corpora to reference and instructional materials design. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), The cambridge hand- book of learner corpus research (pp. 486–510). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hou, H. (2014) Teaching specialized vocabulary by integrating a corpus-based approach: Implications for ESP course design at the university level. English Language Teaching, 7(5), 26-37

Hunston, S (2002). Corpora in applied linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jafarpour, A. A., Hashemian, M., & Alipour, S. (2013). A Corpus-based Approach toward Teaching Collocation of Synonyms. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(1), 51-60.‏

Johansson, S. (2007), Using corpora: From learning to research. In: Hidalgo, E., Quereda, L., Santana, J. (eds). Corpora in the foreign language classroom (pp.17-30). Amestrdam: Rodopi.

Johns, T. (2002). Data-driven learning: The perpetual challenge. Language and Computers, 42(1), 107-117.‏

Johnson, K. & Johnson, H. (eds.) (1998) Encyclopedic dictionary of applied linguistics. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Kim, H. (2019). The perception of teachers and learners towards an exploratory corpus-based grammar instruction in a Korean EFL primary school context. Primary English Education, 25(1), 123-152.

Kim, J. E., & Yoo, I. W. (2015). A Corpus-based Study of To-Infinitive Errors in Korean College Freshmen's Writing. Journal of Asia TEFL, 12(4).

Koosha, M., & Jafarpour, A. A. (2006). Data-driven learning and teaching collocation of prepositions: The case of Iranian EFL adult learners. Asian EFL journal, 8(4), 192-209.

Lakew, A. K., Teshome, S., & Negede, D. (2021). Introducing Corpus-Informed Spoken Grammar Instruction in EFL Classrooms: The Ethiopian Experience. Corpus Pragmatics, 5(4), 487-510

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2015). Research into practice: Grammar learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 48(2), 263-280.

Lee, H., Warschauer, M., & Lee, J. H. (2019). The effects of corpus use on second language vocabulary learning: A multilevel meta-analysis. Applied Linguistics, 40(5), 721-753.

Lin, M. H. (2016). Effects of corpus‐aided language learning in the EFL grammar classroom: A case study of students' learning attitudes and teachers' perceptions in Taiwan. Tesol Quarterly, 50(4), 871-893.

Lin, M. H. (2021). Effects of data-driven learning on college students of different grammar proficiencies: A preliminary empirical assessment in EFL classes. SAGE Open, 11(3), 2158244021102993

Liu, D., & Jiang, P. (2009). Using a corpus‐based lexicogrammatical approach to grammar instruction in EFL and ESL contexts. The Modern Language Journal, 93 (1), 61-78.‏

McEnery, T. & A. Wilson (1997)Teaching and language corpora. ReCALL, 9(1), 5-14.

Narita, M. (2012) Developing a corpus-based online grammar tutorial prototype. The LanguageTeacher,36 (5), 23-29.

O'Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From corpus to classroom: Language use and language teaching. Cambridge University Press.‏

Oghigian, K., & Chujo, K. (2010). An effective way to use corpus exercises to learn grammar basics in English. Language Education in Asia, 1(1), 200-214.‏

Pedrosa, A. V., Domínguez, J., & Sintes, A. (2014). Introduction: the use of corpora for language teaching and learning. Research in Corpus Linguistics, 1(1), 1-5.‏

Poole, R. (2020). “Corpus can be tricky”: Revisiting teacher attitudes towards corpus-aided language learning and teaching. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1-22.

Rodríguez-Fuentes, R. A., & Swatek, A. M. (2022). Exploring the effect of corpus-informed and conventional homework materials on fostering EFL students’ grammatical construction learning. System, 104, 102676.

Römer, U. (2011). Corpus research applications in second language teaching. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 205-225.

Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129–158.

Schmidt, R.W. (2001) Attention. In Robinson, P. (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schwartz, M., & Causarano, P. N. L. (2007). The role of frequency in SLA: An analysis of gerunds and infinitives in ESL written discourse. Journal of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, 14, 43-57.

Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Sun, X., Hu, G. (2020). Direct and indirect data-driven learning: An experimental study of hedging in an EFL writing class. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168820954459

Tsai, Y. R. (2021). Exploring the effects of corpus-based business English writing instruction on EFL learners’ writing proficiency and perception. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 33(2), 475-498.

Ucar, S., & Yükselir, C. (2015). The Effect of Corpus-Based Activities on Verb-Noun Collocations in EFL Classes. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET, 14(2), 195-205.

Wu, S., Fitzgerald, A., Yu, A., & Witten, I. (2019). Developing and evaluating a learner-friendly collocation system with user query data. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching, 9(2), 53–78.

Yoon, H. (2008). More than a linguistic reference: The influence of corpus technology on L2 academic writing. Language Learning & Technology, 12(2), 31-48.‏




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2022-2804-06

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2247

ISSN : 0128-5157