Data-driven learning (DDL) has become an innovative approach developed from corpus linguistics. It plays a significant role in the progression of foreign language pedagogy, since it offers learners plentiful authentic corpora examples that make them analyze language rules with the help of online corpora and concordancers. The present study attempts to reveal Turkish EFL learners' attitudes and beliefs about DDL instruction in terms of lexical awareness and development. A mixed method including a questionnaire and a focus group interview was used to gather data. The statistical analysis of the results indicated positive attitudes towards DDL instruction in terms of raising the depth of lexical awareness particularly for synonyms and collocations. However, participants reported that their awareness towards word frequency, idioms and vocabulary learning strategies did not increase satisfactorily. Negative attitudes were also observed due to technical problems of the software and time-consuming nature of doing tasks through corpus.
This study investigated the production of discourse markers by non-native speakers of English and their occurrences in their spoken English by comparing them with those used in native speakers' spoken discourse. Because discourse markers (DMs) are significant items in spoken discourse of native speakers, a study about the use of DMs by nonnative speakers is necessary and guiding. Thus, the study was based on two specific corpora. First, a research corpus was composed using the transcriptions of the course presentations of twenty non-native undergraduate students studying at an English Language Teaching (ELT) program in Turkey. To compare the data, transcripts of student presentations of native speakers were attained with the help of MICASE Corpus. The occurrences of the discourse markers in both corpora were determined with frequency analysis. The results indicated that non-native speakers of English use a limited number and less variety of discourse markers in their spoken English. The study therefore highlights the importance of the need for raising non-native speakers' awareness of using discourse markers in their spoken English, and recommends implications for English language teaching.
The study aims to present how technology integration can be fulfilled into Language Teacher Education (LTE) contexts by tracking the development of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) of the pre-service English Language teachers through Learning Technology By Design approach. A total of 100 senior student teachers (STs) of English at a large state university in Turkey participated in the study. The STs were required to train their peers about one digital tool and prepare digital materials to be used in language classrooms. The data were collected through three instruments quantitatively and qualitatively: the TPACK-EFL survey, peer reflective discussion forms and focus-group interviews. The findings revealed that the TPACK-EFL knowledge of the STs has improved significantly in all domains after the research intervention, and the STs reported considerably positive perceptions about the digital tools such as increasing motivation and positive atmosphere, more attractive and content-rich materials and more practical and found the experience of peer teaching very effective. The study suggests implications for a variety of digital tools to be used in language classrooms and an effective technology training in LTE contexts.
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