Data-driven learning and young learners: Perceptions and attitudes of Japanese elementary school students towards EFL corpus-based activities

Abstract

There is an increasing amount of research into corpus-based study as a pedagogical approach in language learning (Boulton & Vyatkina, 2021). This is most commonly known as data-driven learning (DDL) and can refer to both direct corpus use and corpus-informed, paper-based activities. Despite this growing interest, the vast majority of published research into DDL investigates university students (Boulton & Cobb, 2017; Pérez-Paredes, 2022) and there is a serious lack of enquiry into children and adolescents (Crosthwaite, 2020). This paper seeks to add to the limited knowledge that currently exists on pre-adolescent learners. An exploratory, small-scale mixed-methods study was designed to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of Japanese sixth-grade elementary school students towards EFL corpus-based activities. Five participants took part in a month-long course of four one-hour online sessions with data collected via a pre-study survey, post-class questionnaires, and post-study interviews. Results show that students display a very favourable attitude towards DDL activities, with a clear preference for paper-based activities over computer-based activities. The findings also highlight the importance of ‘scaffolding’ in young learner education and the potential obstacles that must be overcome to ensure that DDL activities can be successfully implemented in the EFL young learner classroom.