雙語工具對台灣國中學生搭配詞學習影響之研究

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論. 文. Master Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 雙語工具對台灣國中學生搭配詞學習影響之研究. A Study on the Effects of Two Chinese-English Bilingual Referencing Tools on EFL Junior High Students’ Collocation Learning. 指導教授：陳浩然博士 Advisor: Dr. Hao-jan Chen 研. 究. 生：王瑞璓. Jui-hsiu Rose Wang. 中華民國一百零二年一月 January, 2013.

(2) 中文摘要研究發現台灣的英語學習者缺乏對搭配詞的覺察與認知。許多研究因而致力於找出有助學習者學習搭配詞的方法。由於科技進步，檢索系統被利用在英語搭配詞學習上。研究證實，單語檢索系統所提供大量且情境豐富的例句能幫助學習者學習英語搭配詞，但單語例句中不認識的單字仍阻礙學習者查詢與學習英語搭配詞，因此，學習者需要能提供中文翻譯的雙語工具來學習英語搭配詞。雙語檢索系統雖亦被證實對學習語言有助益，但研究對象大多為高中以上的學生，少有以國中生為對象的研究。且過去研究使用的雙語檢索系統所提供的例句難度較高。另一方面，雙語字典一直是學習者在學習語言時最常使用的工具，但傳統雙語字典僅提供字面意義對學習語言的效益不大。有別於傳統字典， JuKuu 和 Bing Dictionary 提供較多雙語例句，且例句難度較低，但其效益尚未被驗證。本研究旨在研究雙語檢索工具對於台灣國中生搭配詞學習效果的影響。兩個國中九年級的班級，共計 63 人參與本研究。一組使用雙語檢索系統 JuKuu，一組使用雙語工具 Bing Dictionary。在搭配詞檢索活動開始前，兩組皆接受前測，其結果顯示兩組在搭配詞知識與能力上為同質性。前測後，兩組接受簡短的搭配詞介紹以及雙語工具使用的說明與訓練，隨後馬上利用雙語工具進行搭配詞檢索任務。搭配詞檢索任務後，兩組學生皆須填寫問卷，並於一個禮拜後接受後測。結果顯示雙語工具 JuKuu 及 Bing Dictionary 對於國中生搭配詞查詢與學習上皆有幫助，兩組學生在搭配詞檢索任務的表現，皆顯著優於前測；其中使用 JuKuu 的學生在搭配詞檢索任務表現顯著優於使用 Bing Dictionary 的學生。兩組學生在後測表現雖皆不如搭配詞檢索任務的表現，但仍然優於前測表現；兩組學生在後測表現並無顯著差異。因雙語工具同時提供英語例句與中文翻譯且操作容易，學生對於利用雙語工具學習搭配詞皆持正向態度，且未來願意繼續使用雙語工具學習搭配詞。學生使用雙語工具遇到的困難及對雙語工具的建議皆在研究中討論。關鍵字：雙語檢索系統、雙語工具、搭配詞、搭配詞學習、國中生 i.

(3) ABSTRACT Some research shows that the EFL learners do not have sufficient awareness and knowledge of the English collocations. Many previous studies have been conducted to find ways to help them learn and use the English collocations. With the advancement of modern technology, concordancers are being utilized. Even though studies of monolingual concordancers have proved that the ample examples with various contexts provided by monolingual concordancers benefit the learners in their learning of collocations, they were often overwhelmed by a great number of unknown words in the contexts. As a result, bilingual tools which provide learners with native translations are now employed in English collocation learning. Research also suggests that bilingual concordancers are beneficial in language learning; however, the benefits were only applied, in the previous studies, to the participants at a senior high level or at a tertiary level instead of a junior high level. Few studies have ever focused on the effects of the bilingual tools on junior high students’ collocation learning. In addition, the example sentences in the existing bilingual concordancers in Taiwan are difficult for junior high students. On the other hand, bilingual dictionaries are most frequently used by learners when learning a language (Lai, 2010). However, traditional bilingual dictionaries only provide learners with word meanings which do not facilitate learners’ collocation learning. Two new online bilingual tools, JuKuu and Bing Dictionary, provide more and easier examples, and their effects on junior high students’ collocation learning have not been verified. As a result, the main purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of the two Chinese-English bilingual referencing tools, JuKuu and Bing Dictionary, on junior high students’ collocation learning. Two intact classes of 63 ninth graders in the EFL junior high school were recruited. One of the classes was randomly assigned as “JuKuu group,” and the other “Bing Dictionary group”. Two tests and a task of collocation retrieval were utilized to explore the effectiveness, and two questionnaires ii.

(4) were used to analyze learners’ perceptions toward collocation learning by consulting online bilingual tools. Before the concordancing activity, both groups took the pretest. The results revealed that the participants in these two groups were homogenous in their collocation knowledge. Following the pretest, a brief introduction of collocations and a demonstration on how to use the two online bilingual tools were given to the participants. They, then, completed the task of collocation retrieval with the help of the two online bilingual tools respectively. After the task, learners had to fill out a questionnaire. A week later, all the participants took a posttest. The results indicate that online bilingual tools indeed facilitate junior high students’ finding proper collocates and enhance their collocation learning. The participants in both groups performed significantly better in the task of collocation retrieval than in the pretest. Moreover, the participants in the JuKuu Group significantly outperform those in the Bing Dictionary Group in the task. Furthermore, the performances of the participants in the two groups in the posttest were worse than those in the task but better than those in the pretest. No differences existed between the performances of the JuKuu Group in the posttest and those of the Bing Dictionary Group in the posttest. As to the perceptions toward collocation consulting with the help of the two online bilingual tools, many of the participants held positive attitudes. Furthermore, they were willing to use the online bilingual tools in the future because the tools provide English examples and Chinese translations at the same time and they are easy to use. Difficulties that learners encountered when utilizing the bilingual tools and their recommendations are also discussed in the present study. In view of the findings, some pedagogical implications are provided. Limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research are also discussed. Keywords: bilingual concordancers, bilingual tools, collocations, collocation learning, junior high students iii.

(5) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is my pleasure to thank those who have contributed to this thesis. Without them, the thesis would not have been possible. First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Hao-jan Chen, for his insightful advice, great patience, continuous support and inspiring encouragement during the process of writing my thesis. He not only guided me to develop and organize my thesis but also shared with me the precious philosophy of life. I am truly grateful for what he had done for me, and it is an honor for me to be his advisee. Furthermore, my sincere gratitude goes to Dr. Jun-jie Tseng and Dr. Shu-li Lai, my committee members. They spent a great deal of time reading my thesis, guided me to reconsider the discussion of the results, and gave me valuable comments and suggestions. All their constructive advice has made my thesis better. Special appreciation also goes to two English teachers, Ms. Pei-shan Yang and Ms. Yu-ming Kang, and their students in Linkou Junior High School. They gave me the opportunity to conduct the research. I would like to thank them for their cooperation and patience during the research. In addition, I am indebted to my colleagues in Linkou Junior High School to support me during my master study, especially, Chia-hui Lai and Tsui-ling Sung. I would also like to thank all my classmates at National Taiwan Normal University. Ivy and Kelly, thank you for your accompanying me in this long but meaningful journey. Gary and Fiona, thank you for your timely and generous help. Finally, my profound gratitude goes to my dearest family and my boyfriend. With their constant support, I have courage to overcome the difficulties during thesis writing. Mom and Dad, thank you for your everlasting love and care. Sisters, thank you for your humorous encouragement. Granduncle, thank you for making my thesis readable. Clement, thank you for your infinite understanding and all the warm words. iv.

(6) TABLE OF CONTENTS 中文摘要……………………………………………………………………………….i ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………...ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………..………………....iv TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………..…….v LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………....vii LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 1 1.1 Background and Motivation ............................................................................ 1 1.2 Research Questions .......................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................. 7 2.1 Empirical Studies on Language Learning via Monolingual Concordancers ... 7 2.1.1 Empirical studies on vocabulary and collocation learning. .................. 8 2.1.2 Empirical studies on grammar learning. ............................................. 15 2.1.3 Empirical studies on self-correction and writing. ............................... 17 2.2 Empirical Studies on Language Learning via Parallel Concordancers .......... 23 2.2.1 Empirical studies on vocabulary and collocation learning. ................ 23 2.2.2 Empirical studies on self-correction and grammar learning. .............. 28 2.2.3 Empirical studies on translation. ......................................................... 30 CHAPTER THREE METHOD ................................................................................... 41 3.1 Participants ..................................................................................................... 41 3.2 Instruments ..................................................................................................... 42 3.2.1 Online bilingual concordancer— JuKuu. ........................................... 42 3.2.2 Online bilingual tool— Bing Dictionary. ........................................... 44 3.2.3 Tests. ................................................................................................... 45 3.2.4 Questionnaires..................................................................................... 47 3.3 Procedure. ...................................................................................................... 48 3.4 Data Analysis ................................................................................................. 49 CHAPTER FOUR RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .............................. 53 4.1 Results of the Pretest, the Task and the Posttest ............................................ 53 4.2 Learners’ Perceptions toward Collocation Learning via Bilingual Tools ...... 58 4.2.1 Perceptions toward experiences of bilingual collocation consulting. . 61 4.2.2 Perceptions toward the strengths and weaknesses of the bilingual tools. ...................................................................................................................... 62 4.2.3 Perceptions toward the design of the bilingual tools. ......................... 66 v.

(7) 4.2.4 Difficulties the learners encountered in consulting collocations. ....... 66 4.2.5 Perceptions toward the future use of the bilingual tools. .................... 67 4.2.6 Learners’ recommendations about the bilingual tools. ....................... 68 4.3 Discussion ...................................................................................................... 69 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 79 5.1 Pedagogical Implications ............................................................................... 79 5.2 Limitations of the Current Study ................................................................... 81 5.3 Directions for Future Research ...................................................................... 82 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 83 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 89 Appendix A .......................................................................................................... 90 Appendix B .......................................................................................................... 96 Appendix C ........................................................................................................ 100 Appendix D ........................................................................................................ 103 Appendix E ........................................................................................................ 106 Appendix F......................................................................................................... 109 Appendix G ........................................................................................................ 111. vi.

(8) Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 3.1 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 4.7 Table 4.8. LIST OF TABLES Empirical Studies on Language Learning via Monolingual Concordancers………………………………………………………….. 33 Empirical Studies on Language Learning via Parallel Concordancers… 36 Empirical Studies on Collocation Learning via Concordancers……….. 39 Data Collection Procedure…...………………………………………… 50 Independent t-Test of the Pretest of the Two Groups.….…...……….…. 54 Independent t-Test of the Task of the Two Groups…………...………... 54 Independent t-Test of the Posttest of the Two Groups…………………. 55 Paired-Samples t-Test on the Task and the Pretest of JuKuu Group…… 55 Paired-Samples t-Test on the Posttest and the Pretest of JuKuu Group... 56 Paired-Samples t-Test on the Task and the Pretest of Bing Dictionary Group…………………………………………………………………... 57 Paired-Samples t-Test on the Posttest and Pretest of Bing Dictionary Group..…………………….………………..………………………….. 57 Results of Participants’ Perceptions toward the Use of the Two Bilingual Tools.…...……………………………………………………. 59. Table 4.9 Frequency and Percentage of the Results of the Questionnaires………. 60 Table 4.10 Participants’ Perceptions toward the Strengths of the Two Bilingual Tools……………..……………………………………………………... 63 Table 4.11 Participants’ Perceptions toward the Weaknesses of the Two Bilingual Tools...............................................…………………………………….. 65 Table 4.12 Comparison of the Two Bilingual Tools.………………………………. 76. vii.

(9) LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 A search of 吃藥 in JuKuu……………………………………………. 43 Figure 3.2 A search of 拖地 in Bing Dictionary…………………..…………….... 44 Figure 3.3 Data collection procedure………………………………………………. 51. viii.

(10) CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION. 1.1 Background and Motivation The pivotal role that vocabulary plays in foreign language learning and teaching has been acknowledged in theoretical and empirical vocabulary research (Hill, 2000; Hunt & Beglar, 2005; Michael Lewis, 2000; Nation, 2001). Vocabulary knowledge not only closely relates to learners’ performance of four language skills but also greatly influences their acquisition of a new language. Wilkins (1972) even stated that “without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (p. 111). The quality of vocabulary, therefore, differentiates language learners from native speakers (Laufer, 1998). Meara (1995) further proposed that the acquisition of vocabulary should be emphasized at the very beginning of language learning. Thus, acquiring vocabulary must be a central aspect of learning any language. Knowing a word does not, however, just entails learning its form and meaning. In fact, knowing vocabulary is quite a complex process. According to Nation (2001), it involves acquiring eight types of lexical knowledge, including meanings, written form, spoken form, grammatical behavior, collocation, register, associations and frequency. declared. Among those different aspects of vocabulary knowledge, researchers that. collocational. knowledge. facilitates. language. fluency. and. appropriateness (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Hill, 2000; Michael Lewis, 2000; Nation, 2001). For example, Morgan Lewis (2000) claimed that sufficient knowledge of collocation could not only help learners know what those words really mean and how they are actually used in the contexts but also help them recycle half-known words. As a result, acquiring proper collocational knowledge should be given a high priority in vocabulary teaching and learning. 1.

(11) Teachers as well as researchers, however, have repeatedly observed that learning accurate and appropriate English collocations is a big challenge for language learners in EFL context (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Fraghal & Obiedat, 1995; Huang, 2009; Nesselhauf, 2003), even for the advanced learners (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993). For instance, Bahns and Eldaw (1993) stated that the learners’ collocational knowledge could not compete with their vocabulary knowledge. In the present study, a researcher who teaches English in junior high school in Taiwan also observes that learners are not able to make good use of the correct collocations. For example, they would use “*eat medicine” instead of “take medicine” or “*big rain” instead of “heavy rain,” which is due to the direct translation from their native language. The reasons why learners have difficulties in acquiring proper collocations can be concluded in several aspects. First, vocabulary in traditional teaching contexts is usually taught individually, instead of collocationally (Fraghal & Obiedat, 1995). Second, EFL learners lack abundant exposure to authentic examples with different contexts and therefore are insufficient in collocational awareness and knowledge (Fraghal & Obiedat, 1995; Kuan, 2008). Third, Nation (2001) proposed that learners’ mother tongue may have an influence on the learning burden of vocabulary learning. This claim is supported by many researchers (Fraghal & Obiedat, 1995; C. C. Lin, 2011; M. J. Lin, 2010; Liu, 2002; Nesselhauf, 2003). When the patterns or meanings of collocations could not be predicted from their native language, the learning burden would be increased and the misuse of collocation will occur (Bahns, 1993; Chan & Liou, 2005; Fraghal & Obiedat, 1995; Huang, 2009; M. J. Lin, 2010). Researchers in Taiwan also found that the EFL learners lack collocational awareness and knowledge, and also run into difficulties while learning collocations. These two factors result in the learners’ misuse of collocations (Kuan, 2008; M. J. Lin, 2010). In addition, as stated by Nation (2001), language learners in Taiwan are prone 2.

(12) to create inappropriate collocations of their own due to their first language (L1) transfer (M. J. Lin, 2009). In response to learners’ need for effective collocation learning, many studies in Taiwan have been conducted to provide appropriate collocation instruction (Kuan, 2008; C. C. Lin, 2011). Recently there has been a shift in attention from teaching the text-based language to integrating the use of technology with the language learning in the classroom. With the advent of Internet and the development of technology, an online concordancer - a newly created pedagogical tool, has been particularly influential. It contributes insights to the language learning due to its provision of plenty of example sentences in various contexts. Monolingual concordancers firstly have been proved beneficial in language learning such as vocabulary acquisition (Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; Varley, 2009), grammar learning (Granath, 2009; Pérez-Llantada, 2009), collocation learning (Chang, 2008; Chen, 2011; Sun & Wang, 2003; Zaferanieh & Behrooznia, 2011), self-correction (O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006; Yoon & Hirvela, 2004) and writing (Chambers, 2005; Charles, 2012; Sun, 2007; Yoon, 2008). Nevertheless, participants in these previous studies found corpus consultation with the use of a monolingual concordancer difficult and time-consuming (Chambers, 2005; Chen, 2011; Pérez-Llantada, 2009; Wu, Witten, & Franken, 2010; Yoon & Hirvela, 2004). In addition, too many words unknown to the learners in the example sentences greatly overwhelm them (Chambers, 2005; Chang, 2008). A study even states that there exists a need for learners to use L1 queries which provide a faster way for them to learn collocations (Chen, 2011). Accordingly, bilingual tools should be employed to reduce learners’ learning burden and increase their learning efficiency. In addition, by analyzing the patterns of example sentences in two different languages, learners can derive the usages of a target word or phrase by themselves. This process is what Johns (1991) called “data-driven learning,” which not only 3.

(13) elevates learners’ position from a passive receiver to an active learner but also arouses their autonomous inductive language learning (Chan & Liou, 2005; Sun & Wang, 2003). Research on collocation learning via parallel concordancers also proved that the native translations in the bilingual concordancers did benefit learners in their collocation learning (Chan & Liou, 2005; Chujo, Utiyama, & Miura, 2006; Kita & Ogata, 1997). Two main parallel concordancers in Taiwan, TOTALRecall and Tango, are built on one major source, Sinorama (1990 to 2000), a collection of news articles about Taiwan in bilingual forms. A study, however, reveals that the contents of Sinorama are for too difficult for the college students to locate the information they want (Yeh, Liou, & Li, 2007). In this case, the example sentences in TOTALRecall and Tango may be even more difficult for the junior high school students, the target participants in the present study. Therefore, another bilingual concordancer, JuKuu, is exploited in the present study, instead. Compared with TOTALRecall and Tango, JuKuu provides not only Chinese translations but also English examples which are easier for junior high students to understand. As concluded by Nation (2003), language learners’ native language which provides them with clear and familiar explanations is the most effective tool to speed up vocabulary growth (Chen, 2011). With the scaffolding of L1 in a bilingual concordancer, learners can engage in an easier learning environment and compare the differences or similarities between two languages to broaden their vocabulary knowledge (Fraghal & Obiedat, 1995; M. J. Lin, 2010; Nesselhauf, 2003). However, some research observes that language learners rely heavily on the online bilingual dictionaries (Lai, 2010). Nevertheless, as stated in Cobb’s (1999) study, through consulting bilingual dictionaries which the learners most often use to look up new words, they will neither improve their reading comprehension nor build a strong foundation for their future language learning. In addition, as explained in 4.

(14) Phythian-Sence and Wagner (2007), acquiring a word does not just mean knowing its dictionary meaning. While dictionaries provide limited examples, concordancers supply language learners with abundant and authentic language usages. Besides, with the applications of new technology, Bing Dictionary was created - an online bilingual dictionary. It provides learners with more example sentences as compared with the traditional paper bilingual dictionaries. The effects of this new online bilingual dictionary still remain unknown. Although the previous studies proved that bilingual concordancers can be regarded as potentially beneficial in collocation learning, few studies compared the effects of these two bilingual tools on collocation learning in Taiwan. Additionally, although previous studies (Chambers, 2005; Chan & Liou, 2005; Chen, 2011; Cobb, 1997; John, 2001; Lixun, 2001) have asserted the advantages of integrating concordancers with language learning, most of them investigated the learning context at a college level (Chan & Liou, 2005; Frankenberg-Garcia, 2009; Gao, 2011; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006; Sun, 2007; Varley, 2009; Yeh et al., 2007) or a senior high school level (Chang, 2008; Sun & Wang, 2003; Tseng, 2009). Only one study was conducted at the junior high school level and the participants in that study were the top 20 percent students in their school (Chao, 2010). In addition, that study adopted a monolingual concordancer to facilitate learners’ collocation learning (Chao, 2010). Few studies have been conducted to explore how bilingual tools can be integrated with collocation learning in a heterogeneous intact class in junior high school. Thus, the present study is conducted with two bilingual tools, JuKuu and Bing Dictionary, which are not only to cater to junior high school students’ needs but also to lessen their learning burden. Therefore, the purpose of this present study is to investigate the effects of these two bilingual Chinese-English referencing tools on EFL junior high students’ collocation learning 5.

(15) and their perceptions of collocation learning with the help of bilingual tools.. 1.2 Research Questions In view of the preceding research purposes, two research questions addressed in this study are as follows: 1. Which bilingual tool is more effective in helping students’ searching for appropriate collocates, JuKuu or Bing Dictionary? 2. What are EFL junior high school students’ perceptions toward these two different tools?. 6.

(16) CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW. This chapter provides a review of the literature concerning two major topics relevant to this present study. One is empirical research on language learning through the use of monolingual concordancers, and the other is empirical research on language learning with the help of parallel concordancers. Themes with regard to concordancing on vocabulary, collocation, grammar, self-correction, writing and translation are included.. In the first section, the research on language learning. through monolingual concordancers is reviewed. In the second section, the research concerning the use of parallel concordancers is discussed. Finally, the comparison between these two tools will be provided. 2.1 Empirical Studies on Language Learning via Monolingual Concordancers Recent research has revealed that concordancing is effective in several aspects of language learning. For instance, vocabulary learning (Charles, 2012; Chujo, Utiyama, & Nighigaki, 2005; Cobb, 1997, 1999; Johns, 1991; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; Varley, 2009; Yeh et al., 2007), grammar learning (Granath, 2009; Pérez-Llantada, 2009; Vannestål & Lindquist, 2007), self-correction (Gao, 2011; Gaskell & Cobb, 2004; O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006; Yoon & Hirvela, 2004), writing (Chambers, 2005; Kennedy & Miceli, 2010; Sun, 2007; Yoon, 2008; Yoon & Hirvela, 2004), translation (Barlow, 2004; Frankenberg-Garcia, 2009; Tseng, 2009) and collocation learning (Chang, 2008; Chao, 2010; Chen, 2011; Sun & Wang, 2003; Wu et al., 2010; Zaferanieh & Behrooznia, 2011). Most of them applied monolingual concordancers. However, few of them utilized parallel concordancers. The impacts of monolingual concordances on language learning will be examined first in this section. In addition, the main information concerning the effects of monolingual concordancers on 7.

(17) language learning is displayed in Table 2.1 and Table 2.3 at the end of this chapter. 2.1.1 Empirical studies on vocabulary and collocation learning. Vocabulary is the building block of language learning. Therefore, vocabulary knowledge not only has an essential influence on learners’ acquiring a new language but also strongly relates to their performance of four language skills (Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; Nation, 2001). As a result, many scholars devoted themselves to research related to vocabulary learning. In addition, the advent of computers and the advancement of technology provide language learners with an alternative— a concordancer. Cobb (1997) conducted a research and proved the consistent gain in vocabulary learning through the use of concordance software, PET˙200 by presenting new words in several contexts. Eleven out of one hundred Arabic-speaking freshmen were selected in the study to learn new words by completing the software tutor’s tasks, including choosing a definition, finding words, spelling words, choosing words for new texts and writing words for new texts. Two different versions of a computer program were utilized; everything about the two versions was identical except that the concordances were not provided in the control version. The main result suggested that reading ample concordances in various contexts indeed facilitate learners’ vocabulary learning in an inductive and efficient way. Cobb (1999) conducted another study concerning investigation of the breadth and depth of vocabulary acquisition with the help of concordancing as well. The participants in the experiment group were asked to compile their own dictionary by utilizing the concordance and the software, PET˙2000 while the control group used a word list and a dictionary. The results underscored concordance learning not only assisted vocabulary acquisition in definitional and transferable word knowledge but also enhanced learning retention. 8.

(18) The findings of the two studies mentioned above, in addition, agree with the idea—data-driven learning (DDL) proposed by Johns (1991).. In DDL context,. learners have abundant language exposure which evokes inductive learning and learner autonomy. However, the concordances in Cobb’s (1997, 1999) study were selected and modified by the researcher, not from learners’ direct consultation. Therefore, his research can simply prove that ample concordances facilitate learners’ vocabulary learning. As to the effects of direct consultation to unmodified resources, more empirical studies are required to further tap into the issue. Among the aspects of vocabulary learning, collocation learning is the most challenging one for learners; therefore, many researchers focus on the studies of collocation learning via concordancers. Firth first brought this notion, collocation, into prominence in 1957. Since then, collocation issues have become increasingly substantial in vocabulary learning. The term collocation has been elaborated in various ways by different researchers. Scholars in the field of language learning and teaching agree that collocation refers to the tendency of two or more words co-occur in discourse (Nation, 1990; Schmitt, 2000). Based on Benson, Benson, and Ilson (1986), collocations can be classified into lexical and grammatical ones. Grammatical collocations are the combination in which one open and one closed class word occur together, typically a noun, verb, or adjective preceding a preposition, like noun + preposition (key to) or adjective + preposition (interested in). Lexical collocations are composed of two open class words, such as verb + noun (take medicine) and adjective + noun (heavy rain). Both of the two words in the lexical collocation contribute to the meaning of the word combination. Recognizing the beneficial effects of collocation learnig, Sun and Wang (2003) investigated the effectiveness of an inductive approach and a deductive approach on learning collocation with the help of a monolingual concordancer— Concordancer of 9.

(19) National Taiwan Ocean University. Learners’ differences, language proficiency and aptitude as well as the difficulty of the collocation patterns were taken into consideration in the study. Two intact classes, 81 second-grade senior high school students, were recruited. One class received inductive teaching instruction while the other class received deductive teaching method. In the pretest and the posttest, two kinds of collocations were tested: easy ones and more difficult ones. Based on Sun and Wang’s (2003) study, one finding showed that the inductive group improved more significantly on collocational performance than the deductive group. Another finding, in addition, suggested that combining a concordancer with collocation learning can develop the students’ ability of discovery learning. Students with different proficiencies could all benefit from this combination. The researchers further pointed out the learners with low proficiency levels benefited more from collocation learning. In sum, inductive approach with the aid of a concordancer can enhance collocation learning. In Chang’s (2008) study, the effects of two monolingual web concordancers and scaffolding prompts on 26 senior high students’ collocational proofreading performance were investigated. The two concordancers were the VLC web concordancer and NTNU web concordancer. The native Brown Corpus of Standard American English was selected. Aided by these two concordancers, the participants were asked to correct ten collocationally problematic sentences. The main results supported the positive effects of a concordancer on students’ collocation use, and these two web concordancers were considered to be helpful and supportive. The participants further stated that they could acquire language patterns by analyzing a great number of example sentences through the repeated display of the keyword or phrase in an authentic context. Moreover, the participants’ consciousness to the use of descriptive language was also raised. Additionally, scaffolding prompts had a lasting 10.

(20) effect on students’ effective use of a concordancer. Some of the participants, however, experienced frustration when encountering too much unfamiliar vocabulary in the concordance output. This disadvantage demonstrated that the vocabulary in a monolingual may overwhelm senior high school students, and the vocabulary burden should be lessened to improve their performance. This current study, therefore, utilizes two bilingual concordancers, JuKuu and Bing Dictionary. Both of them provide translations in the participants’ native language to scaffold learners’ collocation learning. Unlike the senior high school participants in Sun and Wang’s (2003) study and Chang’s study (2008), Chen (2011) has recently evaluated two monolingual concordancing tools, WebCollocate and the Hong Kong Polytechnic web concordancer. The researcher investigated whether college EFL students can use the Hong Kong Polytechnic web concordancer and the new web-based collocation retrieval tool, WebCollocate, whose texts are downloaded from Gutenberg web site, to improve their collocation use in a translation task. The researcher conducted another study as well to investigate EFL pre-service teachers’ perceptions toward online corpus tools. The results showed that the WebCollocate tool was more effective than the Hong Kong Polytechnic Web Concordancer in searching proper collocations and indeed facilitated EFL college students’ collocation production. In the interview, the participants stated that this collocation tool was more helpful than dictionaries, both traditional and electronic ones, in solving collocation problems. The user-friendly interface also increased their support of this collocation tool. Some participants, nevertheless, pointed out that the process of collocation consultation was time-consuming during. As to the perception of the pre-service teachers toward online corpus tools, they 11.

(21) stated that finding the proper collocations merely by analyzing the concordance lines was difficult in most web concordancers. Nonetheless, they could narrow down the search scope with the provision of the parts of speech (POS) search option. In addition, with the aid of frequency summary, the participants could find the most commonly used collocates. Some suggestions were provided for this new collocation retrieval tool, WebCollocate. This new tool could only help language learners to retrieve collocation in English; however, there exists a need for learners to use L1 queries which provide a faster way for them to learn collocations. Apart from employing existing concordancers, Wu et al. (2010) designed a system with an off-line Web-derived corpus as well as digital library software to help learners produce proper collocations in their writing. An expert was invited to test the accuracy and appropriateness of collocations provided by the system. Nine language learners, aged from 18 to 30, from an International English language Testing System (IELTS) writing preparation class were recruited to utilize the system to modify their essays in which errors were marked by the researchers. One major result revealed that the participants could correct 73 errors out of a total of 108 ones. Therefore, the concordancing work indeed helps learners generate more correct, proper and native-like collocations. Some difficulties, however, were mentioned in the study. The massive data, grammatical errors and function words provided by this Web-derived corpus may hinder learners from retrieving correct answers owing to the learners’ language proficiency. In order to facilitate Iranian EFL learners’ collocation development, Zaferanieh and Behrooznia (2011) probed into collocation learning from three aspects in terms of Web-based concordancing. Firstly, they compared web-based concordancing method and traditional ones. Secondly, the impact of implicit and explicit collocation teaching 12.

(22) was investigated. Last, they explored L1 influence on collocation learning. The participants were 45 females with advanced language proficiency in the Iran Language Institute. One major finding proved that concordancing method is highly efficient in collocation learning, particularly in acquiring non-congruent collocations which are regarded as difficult ones for language learners. This result paralleled Sun and Wang’s (2003) study; the participants improved more from the corpus consultation for both difficult and easy collocations. With regard to congruent collocations, no significant difference existed between the two approaches. As proposed by Nesselhauf (2003), non-congruent word combinations due to the differences between learners’ native language and the target language were the most difficult for learners to acquire. As to teaching methods, explicit instruction outperformed the implicit one (Michael Lewis, 2000; Nesselhauf, 2003; Sun & Wang, 2003). Chao (2010) investigated the effects of a monolingual concordancer (IWiLL) use on collocation learning of EFL junior high school students in Taiwan. Two intact classes, 73 second-grade junior high students, participated in the study. The 73 participants constituted the top 20% students in the junior high school; therefore, they could be regarded as high achievers in terms of the academic performance. This study included a pretest and a posttest containing multiple-choice and fill-in-blanks as well as a questionnaire concerning learners’ attitudes toward concordancing. One major finding revealed that concordance instruction was more effective in aiding junior high school students not only in raising collocation awareness but also in learning collocations than traditional vocabulary instruction. Moreover, while the students improved significantly in both receptive and productive collocation learning, they made better progress in productive collocations than receptive collocations. In sum, corpus consultation can not only reinforce language learning but also help 13.

(23) language learners transfer receptive collocations into productive collocations. As a result, the students could remember and recall the collocation more easily. The claim that corpus consultation assists transferable language learning is also supported by many scholars (Chambers, 2005; Cobb, 1999; Kaur & Hegelheimer, 2005; Sun & Wang, 2003). As to the attitudes toward learning with the aid of the monolingual concordancer, the students generally regarded the concordance learning as having a positive impact on collocation learning and vocabulary expanding. The researcher further pointed out that the concordancing instruction is not only suitable for high-ability students but also for low-proficiency students. However, it must be noted that the participants in Chao’s (2010) study are the 20% top students in the school. Therefore, the inference should be cautiously considered. Most of the participants in Chao’s (2010) study, however, proposed that the limited vocabulary size was a major obstacle during the process of concordancing with a monolingual concordancer. The insufficiency in language ability hinders their proper choices of collocations and comprehension of example sentences. The students, therefore, concluded that using dictionaries when concordancing or providing Chinese translations of the concordance sentences would be much more helpful. This present study differs from Chao’s (2010) in two aspects. Firstly, the goal differs. The posttest in Chao’s (2010) study was used to test the participants’ collocation retention. The improvements of the participants in the posttest in her study may be attributed to the repeated practice during the collocation instruction, instead of the aid of a concordancer. The present research aims to investigate the effect of hands-on use of two bilingual tools. In this present research, the participants were therefore allowed to use bilingual tools to accomplish the task of collocation retrieval. Secondly, this present study will utilize two bilingual tools while Chao (2010) used a monolingual one. Based on Sun and Wang’s (2003) results, low-achievers still 14.

(24) have the ability to learn collocations by consulting a monolingual concordancer. Compared with senior high students, the participants, junior high students, in this current study are regarded as having much lower language proficiency. Furthermore, participants in Chang’s (2008) and Chao’s (2010) study stated that the unknown vocabulary hindered their comprehension of the example sentences. Even the college students in Chen’s (2011) study found it necessary to resort to L1 queries. Therefore, with the assistance of a bilingual tool providing native translations, the participants in this present study may have the ability to find the proper collocates and collocations by themselves. 2.1.2 Empirical studies on grammar learning. In order to know how concordance knowledge assists learners’ acquisition of vocabulary as well as grammatical features, nineteen second-grade EFL undergraduates were recruited in Varley’s (2009) study, and they were asked to investigate language features by using a concordancing program, Wordsmith Tools. Firstly, they completed a questionnaire concerning their learning strategies and attitudes toward CALL. Then the participants were required to analyze lexical or grammatical features of a specific genre in their individual project. During the process of completing their individual project with the help of the concordancing software, they kept a reflective log and made comments on the information gained from the corpus. Five learners were further chosen to participate in a discussion group. Course assignments produced by the learners revealed that their awareness. of. lexico-grammatical usage was increased, such as vocabulary use, phrases, collocation patterns and colligational patterns. Similar results were also found in O’Sullivan and Chambers’ (2006) study. In addition, these positive changes would not be a result of consulting dictionaries or grammar books (O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006). As to their perception toward corpus consultation, the participants had positive responses and 15.

(25) regarded the concordancing program as a beneficial tool in acquiring vocabulary and increasing awareness of syntactic patterns. The findings in Varley’s (2009) study parallel what was found in Cobb’s (1997, 1999) studies. The purpose of Vannestål and Lindquist’s (2007) research was to investigate how concordancing influences learners’ attitudes toward grammar learning and whether learning in an inductive way results in improvement in learners’ language proficiency. One major result showed that even if most learners held positive attitudes toward corpus-based learning and appreciated its usefulness, the effects of concordancing on grammar learning could not be found. In addition, weak learners and students whose lack of familiarity with inductive learning may found corpus consultation difficult. The results also revealed that language learning with the use of corpora requires a large amount of training and practice to help learners know how to formulate corpus queries and interpret the corpus results. Based on the above results, learning with corpora may not be suitable for all types of learners. Granath (2009), therefore, proposed that learners with different levels should be guided in different ways when utilizing a concordancer. Contrary to Vannestål and Lindquist’s (2007) findings, Pérez-Llantada (2009) found concordancing had positive effects on grammar learning. Pérez-Llantada (2009) provided a multi-perspective approach to utilize a corpus to increase learners’ grammar proficiency in academic spoken English course. Third-year undergraduates at an upper-intermediate academic spoken English course at the university in Spain participated in this study. The approach in this study contained three sessions: one is the theory session, another is the practice session, and the other is the feedback session. The first part was provided to foster inductive grammar learning and enhance learners’ awareness of the lexico-grammatical patterns in real contexts. In the second part, the participants had to complete tasks such as information search, analysis, 16.

(26) synthesis, and transfer as well as role plays, case studies, problem-solving and simulations. Example concordances in teaching materials were extracted from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). One major result indicated that the corpus-based instruction could provide authentic samples of grammar use, help learners realize the textual, genre and social aspects of grammar use in real contexts, and help learners to use grammar properly and correctly (Granath, 2009). Most studies have addressed that the use of corpora can facilitate learners’ grammar learning in many aspects, such as preposition learning (O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006), part of speech detecting, variation acquisition (Granath, 2009) and patterns learning (Yoon, 2008; Yoon & Hirvela, 2004); however, learners perceive the use of a concordancer as more favorable in lexical learning (O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006). Even some research found corpus consultation more facilitative in writing tasks than grammar teaching (Vannestål & Lindquist, 2007). 2.1.3 Empirical studies on self-correction and writing. Gaskell and Cobb (2004) examined how lower-intermediate L2 writers use concordance feedback to correct their sentence-level writing errors. The participants were 20 Chinese EFL learners in a writing course at a Canadian university. A training program was designed progressing from indirect consultation with the precast URL links to Brown Corpus provided by teachers to learners’ direct use of corpus consultation. The findings showed that consulting corpus to correct grammatical errors does not assume that learners’ acquisition of those grammatical items will occur (Vannestål & Lindquist, 2007). However, the participants regarded concordancing as an enjoyable and helpful learning tool and would like to become independent concordance users. In order to examine the effects of corpus consultation on learners’ error-correction, writing, and their reaction to the consulting process, O'Sullivan and 17.

(27) Chambers (2006) recruited native English speakers who were learning French at both the master and undergraduate level. They are required to directly consult the corpus to improve their writing skills. At the first stage, the participants were required to write a 600-word essay in French and could consult traditional language resources such as dictionaries or grammar books. Subsequently, the instructor marked the errors by underlining and placing an X. At the second phrase, the participants were trained to consult the corpus. During the third stage, they were allowed up to 100 minutes to utilize the corpus to revise their articles and to correct the marked mistakes, and they had to provide feedback. Finally, the participants needed to fill in the questionnaires By analyzing the number of changes according to the type of error, the most notable one is the grammatical error followed by lexical errors. In addition, the main result showed that with corpus consultation, almost three quarters of changes in the participants’ writing were correct. This finding implied that concordance provided information which is difficult to be found in the textbooks, grammar books or dictionaries. Therefore, by offering abundant examples displaying how the words are used in multiple contexts, concordancers can not only make correct forms more salient and more memorable but also lead to long-term learning effects (Cobb, 1999; Yeh et al., 2007). Furthermore, direct corpus consultation indeed promotes learners’ lexico-grammatical awareness (Pérez-Llantada, 2009; Yoon, 2008), reduces the influence from native language and therefore complements the traditional resources and enhances the quality of writing. As to the participants’ attitudes to this activity, the postgraduates were slightly more positive than the undergraduates. In order to investigate whether the direct use of a concordancer benefited the transfer of word knowledge to academic writing and to comprehend the interaction between learners and concordancers, Kaur and Hegelheimer (2005) experimented on 18 intermediate ESL college students with the use of an online concordance program 18.

(28) together with an online dictionary. The experiment group consulted the British National Corpus and an online dictionary while the control group just utilized an online dictionary. In the pretest, they distinguished correct usages incorrect ones while they completed a cloze task and a sentence-making task in the posttest. They were also asked to complete a composition. Finally, a questionnaire was administrated to elicit their opinion of the concordance program and the online dictionary. Compared with the online dictionary, the experiment group did not fully utilize the concordancer and had fewer interactions with the concordancer because of the time limit and the familiarity with the online dictionary. As Chambers (2005) documented, although learners realized and appreciated the use of concordancers and really benefited from the consultation, they still found the real consulting situation difficult because of the lack of sufficient training time. Since the participants had fewer interactions with the concordancer, the finding implied that the generalizations concerning the effect of concordancing on the correctness of word use could not be made. However, in the writing task, the experiment group correctly used more target words to a significant extent. The results reported that with the use of the online concordancer and dictionary, the learners in the experiment group can transfer the word knowledge correctly to the authentic writing task. As stated in Cobb’s (1999) study, word knowledge simply learned from definitions is difficult for learners to transfer to novel contexts. As to learners’ evaluation of concordancing on L2 writing, Yoon and Hirvela (2004) conducted a study which recruited learners from two different levels at the same time, including 8 intermediate and 14 advanced learners. The researchers focused on learners’ evaluation of the corpus consultation. They aimed to investigate how they evaluated corpus use in L2 academic writing and what benefits and 19.

(29) difficulties they perceived in using a corpus. Most participants at both levels held positive attitudes toward the use of the Collins COBUILD corpus and found the concordancing task helpful for acquiring vocabulary usages and grammar patterns, improving writing ability as well as increasing confidence. Nonetheless, as opposed to the findings stated in O’Sullivan and Chambers’ (2006) study, the intermediate learners held more positive attitudes than advanced students. Another study in relation to learners’ perception toward writing with the use of a concordancer was conducted by Sun (2007). Sun (2007) designed an online Scholarly Writing Template (SWT) with an information template and a language template, and the latter used a discipline-specific corpus and a monolingual concordancer to support learners’ language learning. Twenty postgraduate students’ learning processes, the strategies in use, and their perceptions were investigated in the study. The result in Sun’s (2007) study resembles Chambers’ (2005) in that after direct consulting the concordancer, the participants reported that the corpus consultation was helpful but time-consuming and sometimes frustrating and overwhelming. Different from Sun’s (2007) study concerning learners’ perceptions toward writing with corpus consultation, Chambers (2005) conducted a research to examine the process of students’ direct consultation of corpora by analyzing their essays. Their choice of search word(s), analytical skills, problems encountered, and evaluations of the activity were investigated. The results revealed that direct corpus consultation can not only complete traditional language learning resources but also evoked learners’ autonomy and discovery learning (Chen, 2011; O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006; Zaferanieh & Behrooznia, 2011). The participants mostly held positive attitudes toward the direct concordancer consultation with the use of Wordsmith tools and appreciated the authenticity of the concordance results as well as the rich example sentences. Furthermore, participants with limited concordancing skills could still find 20.

(30) solutions in the concordancer to solve some of the problems they had encountered; namely, learners have their own learning strategies. She concluded that concordancer consultation could facilitate language learning; however, limitations including the small size of corpora and the lack of learner training with regard to concordancer use also appeared in the results. In order to probe into the effects of corpus consultation on the changes of quality during writing process, Yoon (2008) conducted a qualitative study to investigate the changes in learners’ writing process and competence with the help of corpus and examined how and to what extent they use corpora independently in the next semester. One major result indicated that the corpus consultation, as a reference tool, helped learners solve immediate language problems as a reference tool, enhance their awareness of lexico-grammar and language patterns as well as facilitate their independent learning and writing. Another result revealed that individual experiences and contextual factors would determine the frequency of corpus use (Charles, 2012). Charles (2012) required participants to compile their own corpora, instead of utilizing the existing ones. Fifty participants in Charles’ (2012) study were mostly graduates at the advanced level and were required to construct and evaluate their own discipline-specific corpora. This research focused on the data concerning participants’ experiences and evaluations of the learning process and aimed to examine whether self-complied corpora could replace the large general corpora and small teacher-compiled corpora in the EAP courses. Most of the students found building their own corpora easy. They further approved that the self-constructed corpus improved their writing owing to the subject specificity and they would be willing to use and develop it in the future. It is noteworthy that no control group was in this study. In sum, although learners indeed benefit from concordancing learning, the 21.

(31) authentic texts in monolingual concordancers are too complex for non-advanced language learners to comprehend and master, even too difficult for advanced learners sometimes (Chambers, 2005; Chang, 2008; Chao, 2010; Chen, 2011; Sun, 2007; Vannestål & Lindquist, 2007). In addition, Yoon (2008) further stated that learners do not use the monolingual corpus for learning new material, but for checking or extending their current knowledge about words. On the other hand, if the learners utilize a parallel concordancer, then they can use their current native knowledge to probe into the corpus and foster new learning. Furthermore, their learning burden will be reduced. Unlike the previous studies which only focused on the effects of one or two tools on learners’ writing, Lai (2010) conducted a study aimed to explore how EFL college writers interact with corpus tools and the dictionaries during the writing process and to figure out their perceptions of these tools. Fourteen non-English majors were recruited in a 17-week experiment. Four online corpus tools, monolingual and bilingual concordancers as well as collocation retrieval systems, were utilized and two online dictionaries were also provided. The participants had two-week training toward these four corpus tools, and during the following three months, they completed three timed online writing tasks and received individual stimulus recall interviews. The recall interviews, the video clips of the writing process, student tool logs, student writing tasks and the researchers’ notes were analyzed. The main result revealed that the college students relied on the bilingual dictionary most, and they reported that the bilingual concordancer was the most helpful corpus tools. Other findings showed that a bilingual dictionary would be utilized when learners searched for information on word form or word meaning. They would consult corpus tools when they needed information on word usage, collocation and grammar patterns. As to learners’ perception, they regarded the corpus tools as a 22.

(32) complement to a conventional bilingual dictionary. Furthermore, because of learners’ limited language proficiency and insufficient prior knowledge of English, they encountered some difficulties when consulting the corpus tools. For example, they could not find word patterns from the concordance lines, could not formulate correct rules, and could not make correct transfers. Since in Lai’s study (2010), bilingual concordancers were more helpful in facilitating students’ language learning, more details about the effects of parallel concordancers on language learning will be therefore discussed in the next section. 2.2 Empirical Studies on Language Learning via Parallel Concordancers Because of the complexity of building a parallel concordancer, most of the corpora available contain only monolingual authentic texts which are difficult to understand and use for language learners. Although recognized as a promisingly helpful tool, corpus application is still limited at the higher education levels. One reason for that is because the English concordances from monolingual corpora have been difficult for the beginning-level learners. Unlike monolingual concordancers, parallel concordancers allow learners to retrieve bilingual examples with translations of their native language. Based on their needs, learners can use both the native and target languages when consulting the corpora. Furthermore, parallel concordancers allowed learners to compare language patterns between two languages (Chujo et al., 2005). Parallel concordancers with native translations therefore scaffold learners’ learning. As a result, many studies were conducted to examine the effects of bilingual concordancers on different language learning tasks. In addition, the main information concerning the effects of parallel concordancers on language learning are shown in Table 2.2 and Table 2.3. 2.2.1 Empirical studies on vocabulary and collocation learning. The main research interest in Wang’s (2001) research was the use of parallel 23.

(33) concordancing with the help of English-Chinese Parallel Concordancer. Moreover, the parallel corpus in this study was designed to help intermediate language learners; therefore, eight Chinese students in the University of Birmingham, learning English in an ESL context, were recruited in the study. Wang (2001) focused on lexical learning with the help of the Data-Driven Learning approach and attempted to make learners aware of the differences between the target language and the native language. The participants were therefore required to accomplish tasks concerning the adverb xian4zai4 (now) by analyzing the bilingual concordance data. In the context of DDL with the help of parallel concordancing, the participants perceived the different styles, usage, or registers in two languages. As a result, one major finding revealed that learners could develop in-depth knowledge of lexical meaning and use based on authentic example sentences provided by the parallel corpus. As confirmed by other studies, (John, 2001; Kita & Ogata, 1997; Wang, 2001), learners also realized that there existed no one-to-one translation between Chinese and English. One of the research questions in John’s (2001) case study was conducted to determine whether a parallel concordancer with a parallel corpus could be utilized in an unsupervised environment, how the beginner students of German at the university level investigated lexical items by directly consulting the parallel corpus, and how the participants compared the two languages. Without guidance, the participant in the study used his own strategies to control his own learning and to complete the nine tasks out of seventeen tasks. The results showed that the translations in the native language provided by the parallel concordancer can prove to be very useful to the language learner. Helped by the translations, the participants not only realized that there was not always a one-to-one equivalent between two languages and there were sometimes no translations at all, but also learned new words during the process of 24.

(34) concordancing. These findings greatly resemble those discovered by Chujo et al. (2005). The researcher further advocated that by using a parallel concordancer, the participant could not only investigate the patterns in the target language but also compare the target patterns with the native language to draw conclusions. The results confirmed that when the translation is provided, even beginner language learners can utilize concordancing. However, considering that the participant in John’s (2001) study was just one college student at the beginning level of German with linguistic background, any generalizations drawn from the study need confirmation, and further research aiming typical language learners on larger scale is needed. Chujo et al. (2006) designed a Japanese-English parallel corpus program combining parallel news-based corpora and CALL-based activities. The learning activities included examining Japanese equivalents of an English word, examining English equivalents of Japanese word, collecting frequently appearing citations, translating Japanese phrases into English, examining collocation patterns, observing recurrences and inducing generalizations. The participants were 52 freshmen and 20 postgraduates. Data from learners’ handouts, daily evaluation, and questionnaires were gathered to analyzed learners’ responses to the program, the learning outcomes and the optimum interface features between the corpus and the user. With this program, they aimed to not only eliminate the language barrier but also facilitate learners’ inductive language learning at the beginning-level in EFL context. One major result provided that a parallel corpus facilitated learners to compare the vocabulary and language patterns between two languages; hence, they could not only acquire new words but also gain knowledge about patterns and usage in the contexts of both languages. For example, they discovered the collocation patterns and one-to-many relations between two languages. The finding is similar to that in the previous research (John, 2001; Kita & Ogata, 1997; Wang, 2001). More specifically, 25.

(35) parallel concordancers provide learners with native translations which reduce their learning burden increase their awareness of the differences between two languages. This way, learners have more energy to put emphases on inductive learning and formulating the underlying patterns from the corpus data. However, there exists no control group and no comparison between the pre-performance and post-performance in the study of Chujo et al. (2006); therefore, the real effects of this parallel concordancer on vocabulary and collocation learning still remain unknown. As for the perception toward corpus consultation, another result revealed that even most of the participants at the beginning level were able to use the parallel concordance tool and most of them held positive attitudes toward concordancing work (John, 2001). Only 36% of the learners felt it was helpful for vocabulary retention, however. Similar results were also found by Chujo et al. (2005). Unlike John (2001) and Wang (2001), Yeh et al. (2007) conducted a research with a larger scale of participants. They required 19 English major in a college freshman writing class to complete five online units concerning overused adjectives by utilizing data-driven learning materials and a bilingual collocation concordancer TANGO. The major results revealed that participants improved significantly in synonym use and the retention learning effect still occurred two months after the completion of the online units. Compared the pretest with the posttest, the overall writing quality was increased due to the correct synonym use. The author proposed that teaching materials should offer learners opportunities to compare and contrast new words in order to use them properly in the correct contexts. Chan and Liou (2005) explored the effects of a CALL approach on four different kinds of verb-noun collocation learning. Thirty-two college EFL freshmen of non-English major participated in the study by attending five-week concordance instruction, taking the pretest, the immediate posttest and the delayed posted, and 26.

(36) completing a background questionnaire and an evaluation questionnaire. The participants were provided with five self-designed web-based practice units incorporated with both deductive and inductive teaching methods. A web-based Chinese-English bilingual concordancer, TOTALRecall, was utilized in the research. The exercises included multiple-choice, Chinese-English translations at the sentence level, and the fill-in-the-blank sentences. Among the 36 test items in the three tests, 26 items appeared in the five collocation units, but another 10 items were not included in collocation exercises. As for the 26 items, 16 items were from collocations taught with a bilingual concordancer, and 10 items were from the two non-concordancing units. Results showed that college EFL students in the experiment made significant improvement in the immediate posttest but regressed later in the delayed posttest (two and a half months). The performance in the delayed posttest was still, however, better than the pretest. Additionally, the participants at low collocation levels benefited more from the online practice. As to the performance in different collocation types, collocations with de-lexicalized verbs and collocations in lack of direct translations between English and Chinese were more receptive to CALL collocation instruction (Nesselhauf, 2003), and the participants’ residual effects of these two kinds of collocations were also better. Furthermore, compared with the deductive method, the inductive method was more effective in collocation learning (Sun & Wang, 2003). As for the perception part, the participants perceived collocation learning via the CALL approaches positively. It must be however noted that no control group was recruited in this study; therefore, the extent to which these effects can be attributed to concordancing learning is still uncertain. Furthermore, some test items were identical with the items in the exercise unit. Consequently, the improvement in the immediate posttest may due to the exercise or the memory effect, instead of the help of the concordancer. This 27.

(37) current study will, therefore, employ two groups at the same time and allow the participants to use two parallel tools respectively when completing the task of collocation retrieval in order to really investigate the impact and the utility of the two bilingual tools. Different from the research mentioned above, Yu (2009) aimed to investigate the effects of a bilingual concordancer on primary school students’ development of word meaning, grammatical function and sentence making with a time-series design. He developed a Chinese-English concordancer whose example sentences were taken from the participants’ English textbook. Links to online dictionaries were also provided. A background questionnaire and interviews were also analyzed in this study. Seven fifth graders were recruited in the study. When taking the researcher’s self-designed vocabulary test, the participants were required to find out the Chinese meanings and the grammatical functions of the target words, and they had to make sentences with the target words in the pretest, experiment, and the posttests. The results revealed that the participants’ had significant better performances in the posttest and the delayed posttest than in the pretest. This suggested that learning vocabulary through concordancing is helpful to most of the primary school students. As to the participants’ perceptions toward the concordancing learning, they held positive attitudes and reported that concordancing learning was useful for them. Their perceptions toward the usefulness of concordancing and willingness of future use may be influenced by their language proficiency, their analytical skills, the access to the computer, and the feature of time-consuming in data analysis. 2.2.2 Empirical studies on self-correction and grammar learning. Twenty-one participants at higher-intermediate level in English reading proficiency were recruited in Gao’s (2011) study. They utilized the online Yahoo Chinese-English bilingual dictionary in the pretest and consulted the CERT 28.

(38) (Chinese-English retrieval tool), a parallel Chinese-English concordancer providing concept-based search, to correct their translations in the posttest. The main result of this experiment showed that learners could independently make corrections by exploring a parallel concordancer without any simplification of the task or hints from the teachers. Inspection of the participants’ translations revealed that the improvements in the posttest centered on phraseology, including word forms, word choices and collocations (Chan & Liou, 2005; Chujo et al., 2006). In addition, the survey in the study showed that the participants’ attitudes toward CERT were generally positive. Most of them proposed that they could benefit from this bilingual retrieval tool in language reading, writing and translation. The benefits of utilizing a bilingual concordancer included learner autonomy (Chambers, 2005; Chen, 2011; Cobb, 1999; O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006; Zaferanieh & Behrooznia, 2011) and language awareness (Chao, 2010; O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006; Varley, 2009; Yoon, 2008). Gao (2011) further suggested that in using a bilingual concordancer, short phrases and multiword expressions are more suitable and efficient because those constitute the building blocks of a language. Since Gao’s (2011) study only revealed that after consulting the bilingual concordancer, learners improved more in translation concerning word choice and collocations, the effects of parallel concordancers on grammar learning still need to be investigated. Oghigian and Chujo (2010) therefore reported their research conducted in 2008. Twenty-two freshmen university students utilized a Japanese-English parallel concordancer to search for and examine basic grammatical structures, discussed the findings with their partner and completed follow-up exercises. The result showed that the participants gained the grammatical knowledge from this corpus-based DDL approach, and they held mostly positive attitudes toward this approach. Correspondingly, the finding of John’s (2001) study in which one college student 29.