Abstract
With the innovation of technology, more and more resources are availablefor language learners. Among them,concordancer application is newer compared toother ones for language learners. Numerous studies have been conducted to examinethe effect of concordancers on language learning. However, most of the empirical studies have investigated college or upper level learners. Few studies have been conducted to investigate how concordancers can be integrated into the secondary school curriculum. In addition, most empirical studies have made use of on-line concordancers, where language learners do inductive learning activities with little concern of the teachers’ role in it, while teachers play important roles in deciding what to include in the curriculum in real language situations. Moreover, in mostprevious empirical studies, computer labs were required for learners to accomplish the concordancer-based tasks. However, the direct use of computer labs in language learning in secondary schools may not be possible because of issues of classroom management, time, and lack of technological support.This study aims to investigate the effects of the use of concordancer-based worksheets on senior high school students’ learning and how these worksheets can be incorporated in the regular curriculum in senior high school EFL classes.Furthermore, the attitudes of an in-service teacher towards corpus application in real classroom were solicited and her suggestions towards current available on-line concordancers in terms of language teaching will be gathered. Senior high studentsin two classes participated in this study. One class adopted the inductive method to learn vocabulary knowledge; the other acquired the vocabulary through the traditional deductive method. The inductive group had five inductive learning activities based on concordancer-based worksheets. Each activity consisted of three parts, including a pretest whose aim was to promote learners’ awareness of target items and test their understanding toward these target items, worksheet activities in which learners were required to read through authentic materials and complete the tasks, and a post test which examined learners’ understanding after finishing the worksheet. After the whole treatment, a delayed posttest was conducted to investigate learners’ improvement after receiving the concordance-based activities. Data were collected through qualitative and quantitative means, including learners’performance on these activities, the scores they obtained on pretests, post-tests and delayed post-tests, teacher and learners’ perception toward the activities gathered through questionnaires and interviews, and also teacher’s suggestions for current on-line concordancers through teacher interviews.The results indicate that the inductive group, with the aid of concordancer-based worksheets, outperformed the control group on the delayed posttest. It implies that concordancer-based worksheets may be more beneficial for learners in vocabulary and collocation learning. The use of concordancer-based worksheets can make use of the advantages of corpora in learning, compensate for thelack of equipment and avoid the technical problems. Moreover, according to the teacher and the students’ opinions, it’s possible to integrate concordancer-basedworksheets in senior high school setting.Key words: corpus, concordancer, vocabulary acquisition, collocation