Abstract
Abstract With the development of information technology, more and more Internet resources are available for foreign language learners. Among various Internet resources, the web concordancer is a relatively new learning tool for foreign language learning, which allows learners to search for occurrences of any lexical term in a corpus of text. Concordancing encourages inductive thinking and discovery learning. Most of the previous empirical concordancing studies have investigated how the web concordancer can be used to assist English learning at the tertiary school level. However, not much is known about how the concordancer can be incorporated into English learning at the secondary school level. Besides, the interaction between learners’ preferred English learning styles (induction or deduction) and the effectiveness of concordance-based learning is worth investigating. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of incorporating concordancing into regular EFL senior high school English curriculum, to examine whether learners’ vocabulary level and preferred English learning style influence the effectiveness of concordancing on English vocabulary learning, and to elicit learners’ feedback on web concordancing. Forty-six second-year senior high school students from an intact class participated in the study in the fall semester, 2001. Before the study, a background questionnaire was used to obtain information about the students’ use of computers and the Internet, their English learning and their preferred English learning styles. Then ten concordancing sessions were incorporated into regular English classes and students were asked to work on the concordancing tasks with the help of the concordancer during these sessions. A pretest, a quiz and a posttest were conducted to measure all the students’ vocabulary learning. An error correction exercise was also used to gain deeper understanding about the process of individual student’s use of the web concordancer. At the end of the study, all the subjects’ perceptions about web concordancing were elicited through an evaluation questionnaire. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run to investigate if there were significant differences among students of different vocabulary levels and different learning styles in terms of vocabulary learning in the pretest, quiz and posttest. The individual use of the web concordancer was categorized, analyzed and discussed as well. The researcher also observed the whole concordancing process from an in-service teacher’s point of view so that suggestions can be provided for English teachers in Taiwan. Through data analyses, the following findings were obtained. First, it is feasible to incorporate concordancing into high school English classes from an in-service teacher’s perspective. Second, concordancing is able to assist high school students’ English vocabulary learning. In particular, students of the low vocabulary level group and the induction group benefited more from concordancing. Third, responses from the evaluation questionnaire showed that students held positive attitudes toward web concordancing and endorsed the effectiveness of concordancing on English vocabulary learning. But they also indicated that technical problems such as the speed and stability of the Internet connection needed to be resolved and a more user-friendly interface of the concordancer is desirable. The results of the study suggested that concordancing can be an effective form of language learning. It liberates students from teacher-centered instruction and encourages students to become responsible for their own language learning. The large amounts of authentic language data used in the process can serve as language input and stimulate learners’ inductive learning strategies. With careful planning and appropriate guidance, it is believed that concordancing can be incorporated into secondary level language instruction to benefit language learning.