Abstract
Abstract Corpus tools are known to be effective in helping L2 learners improve their writing, especially regarding their use of words. Most corpus-based L2 writing research has focused on university students while little attention has been paid to secondary school L2 students. This study investigated whether senior secondary school students in China, upon receiving corpus-based training under the framework of data-driven learning (DDL), could improve their vocabulary use, especially the use of collocations, in their writing for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test. Twenty-two students aged 16–18 in a senior secondary school in Nanchang, China who were planning to take the IELTS exam participated in the study. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Word and Phrase were the main corpora that the participants used to learn various search functions. Pre-writing and post-writing tests were administered to measure the effect of corpus training. In addition, a questionnaire and interviews were used to collect students’ perspectives and attitudes. The results indicate that students made improvement in word selection after three corpus training sessions, and their attitudes towards corpus use were positive even though they were restricted from using computers to access corpora inside their school.
Highlights
In view of rapid globalization, it is not surprising that the number of English language learners continues to increase as English is embraced as theThis work is licensed contemporary lingua franca
This study investigated whether senior secondary school students in China, upon receiving corpus-based training under the framework of data-driven learning (DDL), could improve their vocabulary use, especially the use of collocations, in their writing for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test
The results indicate that students made improvement in word selection after three corpus training sessions, and their attitudes towards corpus use were positive even though they were restricted from using computers to access corpora inside their school
Summary
In view of rapid globalization, it is not surprising that the number of English language learners continues to increase as English is embraced as theThis work is licensed contemporary lingua franca. Many researchers have noted that vocabulary and grammar learning can be considered as the major focus of second/ foreign language acquisition (Pan & Xu, 2011; Song & Chen, 2017; Zhang, 2011). Many Chinese students are capable of recognizing grammatical errors but are deficient in writing academically (Cai, 2013; Zhang, 2018), regarding word choice. This is because their academic vocabulary is limited and they are unfamiliar with how words in English are habitually juxtaposed or collocated (Nation, 2001). Which corpus did you use for your second writing? Which corpus did you use for your second writing? COCA _____ Word and Phrase Concordance______ or please provide the name of the corpus you used _________
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