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DDL can be conducted in three realms: vocabulary, collocation and grammar learning and teaching.
Identifying and classifying near-synonyms are a big challenge for second
language learners because teachers seldom emphasize this part. Hence, it is necessary to teach near-synonyms in class. There is very little research on the effects of synonymy on vocabulary learning, especially by means of data-driven learning. Hence, the purpose of the present study is to explore the effect of using corpus-based DDL on learners’
synonymous vocabulary learning, compared to traditional teaching (with dictionaries). It also aims at focusing on the learners’ reactions toward the DDL approach.
2.6 Research Purposes and Research Questions
The study adopted two groups, experimental group with data-driven learning approach and control group with traditional teaching method. Participants received 10 weeks of data-driven learning instruction and traditional teaching methodology separately and the study would use both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The present study is designed to address the following research questions that have not been answered in previous studies:
1. Does the data-driven learning (DDL) approach with manual concordances improve better in students’ near-synonyms knowledge and performance in comparison to control group taught in traditional method?
2. Are there any significant differences between high and low achievers in the experiment and the control group?
3. What are learners’ reactions and preferences regarding using the corpus to learn vocabulary?
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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
The researcher had a pilot study to see whether the DDL method and questionnaire are flexible or not. The pilot study is described first and then the quasi-experiment is introduced. The pilot study aims to investigate the influence of data-driven learning on three near-synonyms ‘people, person and human’ through corpus-based activity. There were three research questions in the pilot study similar to the quasi-experiment: (1) Does the data-driven learning (DDL) approach with manual concordances improve students’
knowledge and performance of near-synonyms? If so, is it only effective after a certain period of time? (2) What and which aspect of the three near-synonyms do the students have to notice? (3) What are the learners’ reactions and preferences regarding using the corpus to learn vocabulary?
First, corpus technique was put to use in one first-year EFL reading and writing class I for 13 English major students at National Chengchi University in the spring semester of 2012 academic year. Second, pre-test, post-test and delayed-posttest were conducted in order to compare the effectiveness of learners’ vocabulary knowledge. The main purpose of implementing this pilot study was to know whether students’word knowledge improved or not on three near-synonyms idiomatic expressions and
the word usages. All the students’ native language was Chinese. Most had been learning English for 12 years at school.
In the Activity, the researcher put more stress on learners’ vocabulary learning strategies which based on the Schmitt’s (2012:207-208) taxonomy. The lesson plan in
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pilot study is displayed in Appendix A. The activity in quasi-experiment was followed by the same procedure in pilot study. For teaching materials, teacher gave every student a reading package. The reading package consisted of a lyric (where is the love: The Black Eyed Peas) and seven pages concordance handouts. The lyric was used as a warm-up activity to activate students’ motivation. Concordance lines were extracted and selected with careful consideration from the BNC web corpus and then compiled into four page handouts. The four-page concordance handout involved seven target ‘phrases’ and one
‘idiomatic expression’ which were based on three near-synonym (see Appendix B). Seven phrases and one idiomatic expression are shown in Table 1.
Table 3.1 Idioms and Phrases in Three Near-synonyms
Phrase Idiom
people boat people
person
lay person, people person, living person, in the person of, be on one’s person
snake oil person
human complete human, human person
The results implied that participants made great progress in vocabulary knowledge in immediate posttest after data-driven learning instruction. In addition, the participants’
delayed posttest values are still higher than pretest. This suggests that DDL (data-driven learning) can improve students’ near-synonymous vocabulary knowledge. In addition, the result also suggests that data-driven learning might not improve participants’ word
retention ability. Such a finding echoes the previous studies (Sun &Wang, 2003; Chan &
Liou , 2005; Koosha & Jafarpour, 2006; Yeh, Liou & Li, 2007; Alex, 2009; Ewa, 2011;
Serkan, 2011) and proves that data-driven learning enhances participants’ second language vocabulary acquisition.
For the learners’ perception, learners’ perceptions towards computer learning were
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very positive. Learners thought that doing vocabulary exercises through paper-printed concordance is more interesting than doing identical exercises of traditional teaching from textbooks. Every learner would like to do other similar corpus activities in later classes and was satisfied with the experience of learning English vocabulary in a corpus-based learning environment. More students had a sense of achievement in the corpus-based data-driven learning class and more were satisfied with this method.
Since the pilot study showed that the learners have significantly improved on near-synonyms, the main study will try to enlarge the population and increase teaching hours to investigate whether the learners improve their word knowledge or not.
The present study intends to investigate whether learners’ near-synonymous
achievement is enhanced through corpus-based data-driven learning (DDL) instruction. In this chapter, detailed information about methodology is presented in the following order.
It will begin with the introduction of the research design, followed by the participants and setting selected in this research. Later, specific procedure and materials will be outlined.
Finally, the instruments will be described, both quantitative and qualitative methods will be applied.