Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical…

The literature of empirical studies on the concordance-based cloze test (ConCloze) is far and few between. This is despite the fact that it has a potential for item writing without the aid of native speakers and for making use of corpus-based technology in task design. This article explores the test-taking processes and strategies of a ConCloze…

The present study investigates the Thai quantifier 'laay' ([Thai characters omitted]) and its two major English lexical equivalents: 'several' and 'many', using data from an English-Thai parallel corpus, the Thai and British National Corpora. An examination of the parallel corpus reveals that the quantifier 'laay' has a broad semantic property as…

While a wealth of research is available on the frequent multi-word units in academic genres, studies that exclusively link lexical sequences to the rhetorical moves in research articles (RAs) are fairly limited. This study involved compiling a corpus of 8,500 RA abstracts sampled from five disciplines of economics, law, political sciences,…

Learning collocations is one of the most challenging aspects of language learning as there are literally hundreds of thousands of possibilities for combining words. Corpus consultation with concordancers has been recognized in the literature as an established way for language learners to study and explore collocations at their own pace and in…

This study aims to explore cross-language intensification in affirmative sentences by examining the translation of standard amplifiers, words that scale upward towards an assumed norm to emphasize a quality of any entities, from Thai into English. The data comprises 602 parallel concordance lines with 17 intensifying patterns, which were drawn…

Strong claims are made regarding the significant role that multiword sequences play in the comprehension and production of speech and writing. Although the literature is replete with research-informed, evidence-based guidelines on how to maximize the learning of such sequences, such guidelines need to be synthesized, analyzed and evaluated for…

The purpose of this study was to analyze six English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' trajectories of discriminating near-synonyms in a data-driven learning task. Since the learners find it considerably difficult to learn subtle meaning differences of near-synonyms, corpus-based data-driven learning may provide an opportunity for them to…

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in using concordance lines as part of corpus-based language pedagogy to enhance vocabulary instruction. However, teachers in various L2 teaching contexts may lack awareness on how to design and use concordance lines while teaching vocabulary, and they may need guidance in order to implement…

One of the most promising avenues of research in computer-assisted language learning is the potential for language learners to make use of language corpora. However, using a corpus requires use of a corpus tool as an interface, typically a concordancer. How such a tool can be made most accessible to learners is an important issue. Specifically,…

The present article deals with the issue of how to create and operate a customizable on-line concordancer from viewpoints of language teachers and with their own laptops. It aims to introduce how to use and manage this application without relying on computer engineers for various pedagogical purposes, focusing on the four beneficial dimensions of…

Monolingual and parallel concordancers have both been found to benefit second-language (L2) grammatical development. However, the relative benefits of these two concordancer types remains unclear. The present study compares learning outcomes and learners' perceptions of a monolingual English (Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA) and a…

As an important yet intricate linguistic feature in English language, synonymy poses a great challenge for second language learners. Using the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as data and the software Sketch Engine (SkE) as an analyzing tool, this article compares the usage of "learn" and "acquire" used in natural…

This paper aims to investigate the effects of the alignment entailed in the continuation task on syntactic complexity in L2 written production. A total number of 48 sophomores majoring in English at a university in China were randomly assigned to two groups, one is the continuation group and the other is the topic writing group. The current study…

The present study investigates the effects of two different vocabulary learning conditions in digital reading environments equipped with electronic textual glossing. The first condition presents the concordance lines of a target lexical item, thereby making learners infer its meaning by reading the referenced sentences. The second condition…