Integrating Corpora into Collocation-based Vocabulary Learning

Sedef Fenik and Kenan Dikilitas, Turkey

Dr Kenan Dikilitas is the head of the professional development unit at Gediz University Perparatory School. E-mail: kenan.dikilitas@gediz.edu.tr

Sedef Fenik is an instructor and a member of the professional development unit at Gediz University Perparatory School. E-mail: sedef.fenik@gediz.edu.tr

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Abstract
Background
Literature review
Data collection - participants and tools and process of collecting data
Data analysis and interpretation
Quantitative data
Qualitative data
Conclusion and discussion
Implications
References

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the integration of corpus-based activities into collocation learning and to demonstrate this method through contextual action research. Sixty-nine students from two different departments at a Turkish private university in were involved in this study during the 2011-2012 academic year. The students were given short business texts, including words and their collocations, and asked to generate collocations within and outside the text. After a two-hour training on business Corpus, followed by an assignment, a ten item-questionnaire and three open-ended questions were given to elicit their comments on the impact of corpus-based activities on learning collocations. It was found that learner-centered collocation learning using corpus increases the constructivist nature of language learning. Findings also indicated an increase in learners’ autonomy, eagerness to discover, constructive and discovery-based learning skills and motivation to learn vocabulary.

Introduction

Computer technology has provided language learners with an excellent tool, namely (use synonym- ) corpora, which are large systematic collections of written or spoken language in a software pool. Corpus Linguistics is a new field, developing rapidly since the 1960s. A corpus, which is a linguistic database, has been used not only for linguistics but also for language teaching and learning. One of its most important roles is to support vocabulary learning process in the form of deriving lexical knowledge from large-scale corpora, which also include the functions and uses of the target words. It is considered to be a rich linguistic source where language learners can explore the written or oral linguistic input independently. It is these aspects of corpus-based teaching/learning that this study attempts to highlight in order to follow a learner-centred approach, a mode of learning based on discovery and learner autonomy. The rationale behind this research is to find more effective ways of teaching collocations, which includes a learner’s own efforts into the learning process. The paper argues that language corpora can enhance the quality and the retention of vocabulary during learning and create positive attitudes and motivation within learners. It aims to help learners and teachers who are trying to explore new and efficient ways or techniques of teaching collocations.

Literature review

Languages are full of collocations that convey meaning in the most appropriate way. Therefore, collocation knowledge plays an essential role in vocabulary learning. Learners have a great need for vocabulary to construct language for productive skills and to facilitate comprehension for the receptive skills. One problematic question that remains unresolved concerns whether or not having a large store (array/set) of vocabulary and a basic knowledge of grammar is rather enough for fluent and successful communication in second language acquisition (Rudzka, Channell, Ostyn and Putsey,1985). Solely learning words as separate entities is not adequate in second language learning because these words, when combined with other words become lexical items and, may take on other meanings. Without such contextual knowledge of words, learners inevitably construct sentences with reference to their conceptualizations in L1, thus producing unidiomatic, unnatural or atypical word combinations due to transfer-related factors. However, many studies report positive effects of corpus related learning when integrated in teaching the use of vocabulary.

According to Biber, Conrad and Reppen (1998), a corpus is a large and principled collection of natural texts and the field relies on the fact that reliable language analysis best occurs on field-collected samples, in natural contexts. In the light of this information, corpora can also be considered as a huge source of information through which an extensive body of data related to collocations can be reached. Some studies show that using a corpus is one of the most efficient ways of collocation extraction. (Bahns, 1993; Kita and Ogata, 1997; Smadja, 1993). In addition to its provision in collocation extraction, a corpus enables learners to explore and notice target language vocabulary particularly - collocations. As Hadley (2001) suggests, using this technique learners are engaged in a 'content decision making' learning situation. This area is known as Data-Driven Language Learning (DDL). DDL is a term first coined by Johns (2000a, 2000b), who suggests confronting learners as directly as possible with the data, and to make the learner a linguistic researcher” (2002, p.108). Johns (1997, p.101) also formulated the motto “Every student is a Sherlock Holmes!” In this way he describes the learner as a “language detective”. DDL is the "application of tools (concordancers) and techniques from corpus linguistics in the service of language learning" (Payne, 2008). DDL has a variety of contribution to collocation-based vocabulary learning. As Payne highlights, in DDL, unlike traditional methods, students first observe, then hypothesize and finally experiment. Meyer (2009) defines the teacher in DDL as a co-pilot where the learners sit in the driver’s seat and take control of their learning. Bernardini (2002, p.165) also points out that language learners and teachers get their hands on corpora and concordances themselves and find out about language patterning and the behaviour of words and phrases in an “autonomous” way. Kettemann (1995, p.30) also emphasizes the exploratory aspect of DDL and considers concordance in the ELT classroom as being “motivating and highly experiential” for the learner. Exploiting corpora for the teaching of second language has been of great interest for most of language instructors. As most researchers in this field have stated, its advantages in the teaching and learning environment are evident. Aston (1997), for instance, points out that corpus-derived exercises considerably enrich the learning environment. Leech (1994) also conveys two positive effects of corpus-based teaching/learning, namely promoting a learner-centred approach to language learning and teaching, and encouraging an exploration and discovery approach to learning from open-ended and uncensored supply of language data. In addition, Johns (2002, p.108) highlights another positive aspect of corpora use in language teaching, which is that language learners become autonomous when they use corpus based learning techniques.

The DDL technique in classrooms has also been regarded as a useful tool in language for specific purposes (LSP) by most researchers such as Johns (2002) and Bernardini (2002). A corpora user, Gavioli (2006, p.131) states, “ESP students become familiar with a productive idea of idiomatic language features, and they learn to use and adapt language patterns to their own needs”. Similarly, Bondi (2001, p.159) argues for DDL in LSP contexts as a language awareness-raising strategy. This study also aims to show the effectiveness of DDL in ESP courses and to propose the hypothesis that DDL may raise the collocation knowledge of learners from different proficiency levels.

Data collection - participants and tools and process of collecting data

The research was carried out at a private university in İzmir. Sixty-nine participants from two different departments were involved in this study; thirty-eight from the Logistics department and thirty-one from the Public Relations department. The participants were classified into three groups by correlating their school performance with language competency level, i.e. successful, average and under-achiever. Before a two-hour training on business corpora (American Corpus), students were given short texts on logistics and asked to assemble various collections of words highlighted in the text. Through these activities, students were familiarized with collocations and started to become aware of its importance in vocabulary learning both in function and in usage.

The procedures followed in the training

1. The students were informed about the corpus systems
2. An online demo sample was demonstrated as an example
   1. Contextual environments of these words were highlighted for them to notice, thereby allowing them to understand how to look for collocations
   2. The uses of the words were elaborated on so that they can realize the different meanings of words
3. They were given a list of target words and each student found them on the program
4. They were asked to categorize one of the target words according to the words it collocates with
5. Their experiences were also monitored to identify any difficulties that may arise when they work individually
6. The training ended after the meanings of collocations were discussed by students who paired up

After the training, they were given an assignment which led them to concentrate solely on the collocations of the target business words through American corpus. Following the assignment, a multiple-choice and three open-ended questions were given to elicit their ideas and comments on the use of corpora in collocation based vocabulary learning.

Data analysis and interpretation

There were ten items in the questionnaire. Students were expected to respond Yes, No or Not sure for the statements under the following four headings: linguistic gains (vocabulary knowledge, usage and function), productive gains (sentence generating), assumed retention (recalling vocabulary in the long term) and attitudinal status (towards collocations, corpus and dictionary usage). The results were calculated as proportions. The data obtained from open-ended questions was applied to content analysis and emerging themes are shown in Table 1. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed, as the collected data includes information that can be rationalized with the percentages and interpreted. In other words this study involves "quantified qualitative data" (Erten, 1998, p. 153).

Findings

Research Question: What are the effects of integrating a corpus into collocation-based vocabulary learning according to students’ proficiency levels?

The research question sought to find out learners’ perspectives on learning collocations through a corpus and the effects it has on provides in vocabulary learning.

Quantitative data

The collected data shown in Figure 1 demonstrates the frequency of positive answers to the 10 yes/no questions evaluated in four groups: Attitudinal status, assumed retention, productive and linguistic gains. The blue column representing the successful learners shows that there is a steady increase in each category. When the proficiency level increases, the learners gain more benefit from DDL in terms of vocabulary knowledge and usage of the words. There is a trend that shows that the DDL method further enables successful learners more to generate more sentences. Thus, it is important to note that vocabulary knowledge alone is not enough in sentence generation. As Halliday (1966) suggests, that generating a sentence is equivalent to unifying a semantic structure (logical form) with the grammar. The grammar we use comprises three zones; the sentential, the lexical and the syntactic zone. The learners believe that they will retrieve the words in the long term regardless of their proficiency levels. As it can be clearly seen, there is general positive trend towards the use of DDL as a learning tool.

Qualitative data

The collected qualitative data from the written reports of the impact of the approach is explicitly grouped in Table 1. The numbers in parenthesis shows the frequency of the themes mentioned by the participants. The themes are listed in descending order of frequency.

Table 1: emerging themes from the qualitative data

According to Table 1, the first question revealed to which degree the activity was enjoyed. It was clear that there is an overall positive attitude towards the different aspects of learning from the tasks on part of learners from different levels. Underachievers mostly enjoyed searching for new words as well as generating sentences. However, it should be noted here that, although their perception was positive to production, the overall assessment of their tasks they submitted did not support this comment. The sentences were either copy sentences from the corpus or ungrammatical grammatically incorrect. Average learners reported that they enjoyed analysing corpus and having the chance to control their own learning independently. On the other hand, successful learners also mentioned the autonomy level that they achieved and became more eager to discover the lexis and to establish a greater insight into lexical knowledge. The third question elicited comments regarding the information learnt that was considered to be most important. It was found that underachievers again felt that they were successful in sentence generating though this was not the case according to the results from the tasks that they completed. Another emerging comment was related to the achieved vocabulary knowledge and researching the words and meanings. Average learners on the other hand, mentioned the increased vocabulary knowledge, particularly learning functions and structural features of words, as well as learning words with their contextual meanings. Successful learners found it useful to work with the discovery-based approach to learn vocabulary as they induced knowledge from the data autonomously. Another important issue mentioned was to learn to use a dictionary as well as discovering the meaning of the words. It seems that the comments of average and successful learners were richer and pointed to a deeper aspect of vocabulary learning. There is a tendency that the higher the student proficiency level, the greater the gains from these tasks.

Conclusion and discussion

In the qualitative data it was also found that learners made methodological gains through discovery-based vocabulary. Just as Johns (2002, p.108) suggested, to make the learners «a linguistic researcher» where « every student is a Sherlock Holmes!» delivers clear gains. Another finding was that some learners felt motivated and encouraged, which is in line with the findings of Kettemann (1995, p.30): concordancing in the ELT classroom “motivating and highly experiential” for the learner and learners consider that exploring the target collocations to be a motivating and encouraging process. This study found that proficiency level is an essential factor in conducting DDL. Tian (2005) actually found no evidence that DDL works better with high or low level learners. Quantitative data revealed retention as a positive outcome that was also supported by the idea that inductive learning helps words to be kept in long term memory (Cobb, 1999 and Folse, 2004) and can therefore later be recalled with ease. Corpus evidence enables learners of English on different levels to acquire collocations in an inductive way thus making the words move from short-term to long- term memory. “Learners should be exposed to new words multiple times for longer retention. When learners encounter words in a variety of contexts they are able to retain and use them flexibly.”The learners, particularly successful ones, mentioned the inductive and discovery aspect of DDL, and this is in line with Bahns (1993) which concluded that abundant exposures to huge amounts of linguistic data can enhance learners’ sense of discovery learning and problem solving activities. The positive effect of DDL on learners can also be explained with reference to Barcroft (2004) which suggested that semantic elaboration has a positive influence on memory for known words in that semantically elaborative activities that require deeper processing lead to better memory than those requiring simplistic processing. It seems clear that the longer learners deal with vocabulary items using corpus data, the more effective their learning will be.

Implications

DDL could be a useful tool for teachers as well as for learners. DDL may also present some challenges, on the other hand it helps create a relatively less interventionist approach to learning. Teachers should be trained to use these programs for a variety of purposes. As Hadley (2001) suggests, a teacher can simplify the concordance material and lessen its authenticity or maintain the authenticity and risk demotivating some students because of the difficulty of the material. Students should be encouraged to implement this approach independently or with a teacher’s guidance.

References

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