UCREL Corpus Research Seminar

The use of corpora for language teaching/learning, via teacher-prepared corpus-assisted materials development or learners' direct use of corpus query software (commonly known as "data-driven learning", DDL) is gaining in popularity in pre-tertiary EFL contexts. However, improving trainee English teachers' technological and pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) regarding integration of corpus tools/DDL pedagogy into classroom practice has received little attention from a language teacher education perspective.

This qualitative study therefore reports on a DDL lesson planning intervention for pre-service secondary school EFL teachers in Indonesia. I explore how trainee language teachers integrate DDL into their lesson planning following DDL training, and whether the trainees' LPs demonstrates appropriate TPACK required for successful future implementation. Nine pre-service EFL teacher trainees were enrolled in a teacher education program in Jakarta, Indonesia. The DDL training regimen included partial completion of a Short Private Online Course on DDL (Improving Writing Through Corpora, Crosthwaite, 2020) covering basic corpus techniques required for DDL (e.g. generating corpus queries, reading/manipulating concordances, understanding frequency information) using SKELL (Baisa & Suchomel, 2014) and SketchEngine (Kilgariff et. al, 2014). Trainees then submitted a sample lesson plan which was scrutinized for components where corpus data could enhance the proposed lesson's materials or where learners could engage in direct corpus consultation/DDL. Three, three-hour workshops on DDL were then conducted online via Zoom. Following these, trainees discussed their DDL training and lesson planning via Google Classroom chat, before working alone to create a new lesson plan including at least one direct DDL activity. Data includes the researcher's initial feedback regarding integration of DDL into trainees' original (non-DDL) lesson plans, trainees' Google Classroom chat logs, and trainees' completed lesson plans involving DDL resources/activities. Harris et. al's (2010) Technology Integration Observation Instrument was used to evaluate trainees' completed lesson plans for TPACK regarding curriculum goals and technologies; instructional strategies and technologies; Technology selection(s); and 'Fit'.

The data suggest trainees each integrated corpora/DDL into their lesson planning despite none reporting using a corpus prior to training. Submitted lesson plans featured DDL for language-related concerns (e.g. 'grammar focus'), and to support task-based genre-focused pedagogies as required by the Indonesian national curriculum. While submitted plans demonstrated high levels of 'fit' regarding curriculum goals and technology selection, some plans lacked DDL-relevant instructional strategies. However, TPACK scores for submitted lesson plans were generally high following only a short (but intensive) period of DDL training, underscoring the significant potential for integrating DDL into pre-tertiary classroom practice.

References

Baisa, V. & Suchomel, V. (2014) SkELL: Web interface for English language learning. In Horák, A. & Rychlý, P. (ed.), Proceedings of Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing. Karlova Studánka, Czech Republic, 5-7 December, 63-70.

Crosthwaite, P. (2020). Taking DDL online: Designing, implementing and evaluating a SPOC on data-driven learning for tertiary L2 writing. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 43(2), 169-195.

Harris, J., Grandgenett, N., & Hofer, M. (2010). Testing a TPACK-based technology integration assessment rubric. In C. D. Maddux, D. Gibson, & B. Dodge (Eds.), Research highlights in technology and teacher education (pp. 323-331). Chesapeake, VA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE).

Kilgarriff, A., Baisa, V., Bušta, J., Jakubíček, M., Kovář, V., Michelfeit, J., & Suchomel, V. (2014). The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography, 1(1), 7-36.