data-driven learning

Corpus linguistics has developed a new avenue of research in the field of language teaching. One important aspect of corpora is concordancing. Drawing on the concept of concordance, this study aimed to explore whether concordancing can effectively improve the vocabulary learning and retention of Persian EFL learners. To this end, 50 homogenous learners were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Vocabulary pre-test and post-test, and interviews were employed to collect the data. The results of this mixed method study revealed a statistically significant difference between the control and experimental groups on post-test scores; furthermore, the experimental group’s retention of these items was weaker in the delayed post-test. Finally, the results of interviews showed that this approach increased learners' enjoyment and interest in learning, led to a greater appreciation of particular uses of words in various contexts, enhanced learners' command of the target language's linguistic rules and patterns, facilitated the development of autonomy, and improved learners' language awareness.

The aim of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of data-driven learning (DDL) method in helping pre-intermediate Kurdish students in learning six English prepositions, which were in, on, at, to, behind, in front of, between, beside, over and under. The participants of the study were 100 intermediate EFL Kurdish learners aged 18 to 20 from Lebanese French University in Kurdistan, Iraq. The participants were divided into two groups, one experimental and control group (50 in each group). The present research adopted a quantitative research as a quasi-experimental research which was fulfilled in the form of pretest and a posttest. The uniformity of the EFL students was ensured using the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The researcher created the pretest and posttest in this study to assess the participants' learning and retention before and after the intervention. The results revealed that DLL method had a greater impact on English preposition learning in comparison with rote learning. Thus, this study has some pedagogical implications for English language teachers in Iraq to be aware of cognitive linguistic usage as a frequent practice in the EFL classroom.

In light of the importance of metadiscursive code glosses in establishing writer-reader interactions and the necessity of teaching these markers according to the genre of interest, this study aimed to evaluate the comparative effect of three instructional approaches on fixing the underuse of code glosses in Iranian intermediate English as a foreign language learners' expository essay. Sixty Iranian EFL learners with underuse of code glosses in the Iranian Corpus of Learner English were recruited through a purposive sampling procedure and randomly assigned to four groups: production-oriented approach, genre awareness, data-driven learning, and control. After the treatment phase, three 250-word expository essays were assigned to groups. Four learner corpora were compiled from the learners’ expository essays. Statistical comparisons of the corpora with their counterparts from the pre-treatment phase suggested significant improvements in the frequency of the use of code glosses in the production-oriented approach and data-driven learning groups but not in the genre awareness and control groups. Moreover, learners in the production-oriented approach group outperformed those in the data-driven learning group. Implications of the results, including the potential use of the production-oriented approach in the Iranian EFL context for the instruction of other metadiscourse types, in particular, and academic English instruction at large, have been considered.

The present study scrutinized the role of data-driven learning in recognizing and producing collocations by high- and low-intermediate learners of English. Moreover, the influence of secondary effect (or transfer of training) on learning secondary collocations (collocations not provided in concordancing but embedded implicitly in tasks) was examined. The learners’ attitudes towards the effect of concordancing on learning collocations and their attitude change over time were also elicited through a questionnaire. A total of 40 Iranian learners were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. Each group was further subdivided into high- and low-intermediate learners. The experimental group received a 10-session treatment in which they had access to concordancing to perform the paraphrasing tasks. The control group was taught the same collocations in a traditional explicit way. Results revealed that the high-intermediate learners benefitted from concordancing in both primary and secondary learning of collocations more than the low-intermediate learners. Both high- and low-intermediate groups appreciated the positive role of concordancing in learning collocations and stated that their attitudes towards concordancing changed positively over time.