Effectiveness of corpus consultation through concordancing on the formulaic academic language use of freshman ELT students

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of corpus consultation through concordancing on non-native English speaker freshman ELT students̕ use of the formulaic language features characterizing the summary of a research article and the rhetorical moves of the research paper introduction (RPI) within a genre-specific perspective; the reported confidence levels of the learners with respect to these writing tasks and their opinions about concordancing. The experimental group using concordancing included 30 and the control group 28 participants. Quantitative data were analyzed via mixed de sign analyses of variance and independent samples ttests. Results showed that the means of the three measurements of summary writingfor the experimental group did not differ significantly from those for the controlgroup. However, a main effect of time was found for both groups from the first to the last measurement. Furthermore, the groups did not significantly differ in their useof formulaic sequences in an RPI and in productive and receptive knowledge of these sequences. A self-evaluation questionnaire and semi-structured interviews served asthe qualitative data. The questionnaire data revealed no significant difference in the levels of reported confidence in summarizing a research article and writing an RPI. However, both groups reported higher level of confidence in writing an RPI. Inductive content analysis of the interview data revealed that while concordancing helped learners gain awareness of the formulaic academic language used by expertwriters, and act as researchers of language, such activity needed to be tailored to individual differences through challenging and motivating task design.