Abstract
<p><em><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Previous studies have shown that web-based concordancing is advantageous for tertiary-level learners or above in improving their vocabulary knowledge and writing skills; however, its effects on primary school students are less well known as relatively little research has been conducted for this particular age group. Therefore, In the present study, a Chinese-English concordancer specifically designed for Taiwanese primary school students was developed with a corpus taken from sentences modeling their English textbooks. The research aimed to investigate the effectiveness of web-based concordancing on children’s vocabulary learning. In order to observe the development of vocabulary knowledge, one of the longitudinal designs, the time-series design (Mellow, Reeder, & Forster, 1996), was adopted for 28 weeks long. In the study, seven fifth graders in an intact class were required to provide the word meanings, usage of the target words and produce sentences with the words before, during, and after the concordancing consultation as the treatment. Measurements included vocabulary tests, a background questionnaire, and a final interview about students’ perceptions about the concordancing learning. The results displayed that the young participants significantly improved their knowledge of the target words immediately after using the concordancing, but regressed a bit at the end of the study. In addition, the students also indicated the aspects they favored as well as the troubles they encountered during the concordancing learning. Finally, pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research are also provided.</span></span></em></p>