Paraphrasing, or restating information using different words, is critical to successful writing. However, EFL learners have difficulty in making paraphrases to meet their writing demands, and there has been little research on developing automatic reference tools to assist these learners' paraphrasing skills for better writing quality. In this…

Much of the research into language learners' use of corpus resources has been conducted by means of indirect observation methodologies, like questionnaires or self-reports. While this type of study provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the benefits and limitations of using corpora to teach and learn language, the use of indirect…

Usage-based theories of language learning suggest that native speakers of a language are acutely aware of formulaic language due in large part to frequency effects. Corpora and data-driven learning can offer useful insights into frequent patterns of naturally occurring language to second/foreign language learners who, unlike native speakers, are…

The development of adequate collocational knowledge is important for foreign language learners; nonetheless, learners often have difficulties in producing proper collocations in the target language. Among the various ways of learning collocations, the DDL (data-driven learning) approach encourages independent learning of collocations and allows…

The web is a potentially useful corpus for language study because it provides examples of language that are contextualized and authentic, and is large and easily searchable. However, web contents are heterogeneous in the extreme, uncontrolled and hence "dirty," and exhibit features different from the written and spoken texts in other linguistic…

Formulaic speech has been notoriously difficult to define and identify despite its crucial importance to native-like fluency and idiomaticity. In this article, I introduce a way of identifying phraseological units in a running text. I am interested in recurrent fragments like "charged with crimes against humanity" in texts which involve multiple…

This exploratory study describes a framework for data-driven learning (DDL), in General (non-major) English university classes, in which learners "construct" linguistic corpora instead of merely "consulting" them. Prior related work has addressed the needs of language specialists, in particular trainee translators who are…

The present study investigates the effects of scaffolding and web concordancers on students' proofreading performance. The study addresses the following research questions: (1) How does a concordancer search enhance students' proofreading performance? (2) How does scaffolding for concordancer searches enhance students' proofreading performance?…