Work Your Way through Authentic Data: Data-driven Construction Learning and Its Effectiveness Explored through an Experimental Study

抄録

Corpora have been utilized for purposes of language pedagogy. One of the approaches, data-driven learning (DDL), uses corpora or corpus-based materials in language classrooms. DDL is an inductive language learning method in which learners explore authentic language data and discover linguistic patterns on their own. While empirical studies on DDL have been increasing (Boulton & Cobb, 2017), there are only a few experiments on “data-driven construction learning” (Gilquin, 2021). The present paper reports the results of an experiment aimed at testing the effectiveness of data-driven construction learning and evaluating learners’ attitudes towards DDL. In the experiment, two groups of Japanese learners of English learned the way construction (e.g., Goldberg, 1995; Luzondo Oyón, 2013) with one group learning through DDL and the other through a traditional form-focused instruction. DDL in this study includes an explicit explanation of the target construction, following the tenet of applied construction grammar (Gilquin & De Knop, 2016). The effectiveness of the two methods was measured and compared by means of pre- and post-tests (sentence production and translation tasks). Additionally, the learners’ attitudes towards DDL were investigated through a post-questionnaire. The improvement of both sentence production and translation tasks in the post-tests demonstrated that both DDL and the traditional instruction were effective. Also, the participants’ attitude towards DDL was found to be positive. However, learners who received the traditional instruction outperformed those who received DDL. Therefore, the present study concludes that even though DDL was effective, other teaching methods could be more beneficial for learners, depending on the difficulty of a target construction and learners’ proficiency. This paper also argues that learners can benefit from DDL in various ways, such as developing general cognitive skills, and hence it is suggested that incorporating DDL into a classroom activity or employing it as an out-of-class activity would be advantageous.