Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of combining two newly developed web-based tools for the foreign language DDL classroom. One is a KWIC concordance tool, WebParaNews, and the other is a lexical profiling tool, the LagoWordProfiler. Both are freeware and are based on the same parallel corpus, ParaNews, which consists of newspaper texts in English along with their aligned translations in Japanese. Using the same syllabus to teach various types of noun phrases for ten weeks, only one tool was used with the 2013 group, and both of the two tools were used in combination with the 2014 group. In order to reconfirm the effectiveness of combining two tools, both of the two tools were also used in 2015 group. In each year the teaching effect was measured using a pre- and post-test, and students' feedback was collected using a 31-item questionnaire. Groups using both tools performed better than the single tool group on the gain between the pre- and post-test and gave more positive student feedback. This combined-resource approach using different types of information from two corpus tools may be more helpful for understanding the targeted grammar items than a more traditional single tool approach.
Highlights
their jurisdictions (The) effect size for the producing and identifying noun phrases (NPs) questions was large in Group 2 (2014 double tool group) and Group 3 (2015 double tool group) or medium in Group 1. (For criteria, see Cohen [19])
Among these three NP questions, the results show that all participants improved in the “Producing NP” and “Identifying NP” questions
Teachers and students must have access to reliable and fast computer systems; there must be time in a curriculum to introduce students to Data Driven Learning (DDL) and guide them through what it is to be a language researcher themselves [26]; complex and often overwhelming monolingual concordance lines can be countered with parallel corpora and the use of sorting; a corpus must be found that is relevant, that is, by language, age, culture, register and context, and paired with an accessible and user friendly corpus tool; and teachers need the experience to either anticipate problematic search results or pre-vet the searches by providing paper-based search results [12], or by controlling the corpus
Summary
67] noted that there was “an unfortunate shortage of copyright available e-texts at the beginner level.”. Another possible reason is the lack of user-friendly tools. Tribble points that for most users, the user-friendliness and free access appear to be major factors for selecting a corpus program. These three tools were developed for researchers and advanced learners and are too refined for general EFL students’ use. In order to implement DDL in a beginner-level classroom, these two challenges, i.e. appropriate-level corpora and user-friendly corpus tools, need to be overcome
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