Slovak University Students´ Assessment of Corpus-Driven Grammar Teaching Materials

Abstract

Corpus linguistics with its tools has become influential in the area of foreign languages teaching in recent decades; still, the direct use of corpus-driven materials in the classroom seems to be restricted. The present paper deals with the usability of corpus-driven teaching materials oriented on the specific field of articles in the university surroundings. The research will strive to investigate the effectiveness of corpus-driven teaching materials from several points of view. In order to collect data for the research, the researcher utilized a questionnaire consisting of 48 questions that was distributed to 94 university undergraduates. After carrying out the statistical evaluation, the research results show that university students are inclined to assess corpus-driven grammar teaching materials positively mainly because of these aspects: the access to authentic language, the access to information and topic that are relevant to the students, the compatibility with the syllabus. On the other hand, factors like the development of linguistic awareness, the development of critical thinking, the cooperation with other students do not play a substantial role since their statistical significance reaches only a negligible percentage. The study results indicate that it is advisable to include a corpus linguistic course into the training of prospective teachers.