APJCR_2021_2_1_1

Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-11
Abbreviation: APJCR
e-ISSN: 2733-8096
Publication date: 31 August 2021
Received: 9 November 2020 / Received in Revised Form: 29 March 2021 / Accepted: 28 July 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22925/apjcr.2021.2.1.1

Novice Corpus Users’ Gains and Views on Corpus-based Lexical Development: A Case Study of COVID-19-related Expressions

Mei-Hua Chen (Tunghai University)
Copyright 2021 APJCR

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Recently, corpus assisted vocabulary instruction has been attracting a lot of interest. Most studies have focused on understanding language learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge. Limited attention has been paid to learners’ productive competence. To fill this gap, this study attended to learners’ productive lexical development in terms of form, meaning and use respectively. This study introduced EFL learners to the corpus-based language pedagogy to learn COVID-19 theme-based vocabulary. To investigate the gains and views of 33 EFL first-year college students, a sentence completion task and a questionnaire were developed. Learners’ productive performances in the three lexical knowledge aspects (i.e., form, meaning and use) were particularly targeted. The results revealed that the students achieved significant gains in all aspects regardless of their proficiency level. In particular, the less proficient students achieved greater knowledge retention compared with their highly proficient counterparts. Meanwhile, students showed positive attitudes towards the corpus-based approach to vocabulary learning.

Keywords

Corpus-based Lexical Development, Theme-based Vocabulary Learning, Lexical Knowledge, Guided Instruction, COVID-19

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The Author

Mei-Hua Chen is an Associate Professor of Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. She received the PhD degree in Computational Linguistics from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan in 2013. Her research interests lie in the fields of corpus linguistics, computer-assisted language learning, and TESOL. She has published several articles on aspects of CALL and TESOL.

The Author’s Address

First and Corresponding Author
Mei-Hua Chen
Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
Tunghai University
No.1727, Sec.4, Taiwan Boulevard, Xitun District, Taichung, TAIWAN.
E-mail: mhchen@thu.edu.tw

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