Autonomous corpus use by graduate students: a long-term trend study (2009–2017)

Maggie Charles*, Gregory Hadley*

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Corpus use by EAP students has reportedly increased over the last decade, with considerable optimism about the future of this approach (Chen & Flowerdew, 2018a). However, much research employs data from short classroom courses; little is known about how student corpus use has varied over a span of multiple years. This paper uses long-term trend data from a corpus-based course for graduates which ran 50 times (2009–2017) at a UK university. The course taught students to build do-it-yourself corpora based on their research topic and promoted autonomous consultation of this resource. Questionnaires on corpus use were administered at three stages: pre-course (544 students), immediate post-course (343) and delayed post-course, after one year (221). The data show that pre-course corpus use was constant (mean 24%), while immediate post-course use (mean 87%) and delayed post-course use rose only slightly (mean 62%) from 2009 to 2017. The lack of appreciable growth in corpus use over nine years does not support the expectation of increased take-up in future. However, the means for regular autonomous use (≥1/week) at 61% (immediate post-course) and 37% (delayed post-course), show the success of the do-it-yourself corpus approach in fostering the autonomous use of corpora by graduates.
Original languageEnglish
Article number101095
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of English for Academic Purposes
Volume56
Early online date16 Feb 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022

Keywords

  • Do-it-yourself corpora
  • Student corpus use
  • EAP learner Autonomy
  • Long-term corpus use
  • Graduate EAP
  • Data-driven learning

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