Enhancing grammar proficiency of EFL learners through corpus-integrated lessons

Abstract

This article explores what corpus-integrated lessons can be designed for EFL students in the Chinese context. It aims to shed light on the relations between developmental research and the degree to which the desired objective has been achieved. It utilized developmental, explanatory sequential mixed methods, and quasi-experimental designs. The researcher built an approximate 710,000-token corpus of texts taken from over fifty Bookworms literary books and New Concept English. The proficiency pre-test also revealed the following areas as their weaknesses: word formation, conjunction and relative clause, nonfinite verbs, prepositions and verbs. Hence, the lessons were anchored on these weaknesses. After eight weeks of implementation, the statistical evidence confirms the hypothesis that there is a significant difference between the pre-test and the post-test. The test was subjected to the reliability and validity test. The study yields promising results regarding the efficacy of DDL-inspired lessons on Chinese high school students’ learning of grammatical constructions. Comparisons between the pre-test and post-test and perceptions collected through the semi-open interviews suggest that (1) for intermediate and advanced senior high school students, inductive learning is superior to and more effective than deductive learning, (2) corpus-integrated classroom resources need full involvement from the applied linguist, the educational psychologist, the textbook writer and the language teacher to fulfill its true potential and (3) the idea for corpus literacy should be integrated into the curriculum for teacher education program.