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

This study examines the frequency and usage patterns of linking adverbials in Korean students' essay writing in comparison with native English writing. The learner corpus used in the present study is composed of 105 essays that were produced by first-year university students in Korea. The control corpus was taken from the American LOCNESS…

This study presents the results from a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system of Runyakitara (RU_CALL). The major objective was to provide an electronic language learning environment that can enable learners with mother tongue deficiencies to enhance their knowledge of grammar and acquire writing skills in Runyakitara. The system…

One of the aspects of knowing a word is the knowledge of which words it is usually used with. Since knowledge of collocations is essential for appropriate and fluent use of language, learning collocations should have a central place in the study of vocabulary. There are different opinions about the best ways of learning collocations. This study…

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…

Expressing causal relations plays a central role in academic writing. While it is important that writing instructors assess and provide feedback on learners' causal discourse, it could be a very time-consuming task. In this respect, automated writing evaluation (AWE) tools may be helpful. However, to date, there have been no AWE tools capable of…

Collocational competence is recognized to be integral to native-like L2 performance, and concordancing can be of assistance in gaining this competence. This study reports on an investigation into the effect of symmetrical and asymmetrical scaffolding on the collocational competence of Iranian intermediate learners of English in the context of…

Construction grammar (CG) has been proposed as an adequate grammatical formalism for building intelligent language tutoring systems because it is highly compatible with the learning strategies observed in second language learning. Unfortunately, the lack of computational CG implementations has made it impossible in the past to corroborate these…

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…

A number of studies have suggested the possible benefits of using concordancers in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. To date, however, there is still limited understanding of how EFL writers may make use of such tools along with dictionaries when engaging in a writing task. To better understand the question, this study investigated a…

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…

This study presents an efficient approach to personalized mispronunciation detection of Taiwanese-accented English. The main goal of this study was to detect frequently occurring mispronunciation patterns of Taiwanese-accented English instead of scoring English pronunciations directly. The proposed approach quickly identifies personalized…

Previous studies on self-correction using corpora involve monolingual concordances and intervention from instructors such as marking of errors, the use of modified concordances, and other simplifications of the task. Can L2 learners independently refine their previous outputs by simply using a parallel concordancer without any hints about their…

This study used a randomized pretest-posttest control group design to examine the effect of the integration of corpora in general English courses on the students' vocabulary development. To enhance the learners' lexical repertoire and thereby improve their reading comprehension, an online corpus-based approach was integrated into 42 hours of…

The few studies that deal with machine translation (MT) as a language learning tool focus on its use by advanced learners, never by beginners. Yet, freely available MT engines (i.e. Google Translate) and MT-related web initiatives (i.e. Gabble-on.com) position themselves to cater precisely to the needs of learners with a limited command of a…