Dictionaries vs concordancers: actual practice of the two different tools in EFL writing

Abstract

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 class of non-English-major college students (N = 14) over a semester. Four online corpus tools, including monolingual and bilingual concordancers and collocation retrieval systems, were provided, along with two online dictionaries. After two tool-training sessions, students performed three timed-writing tasks online during three consecutive months and received individual stimulus recall interviews after each writing task. The recall interviews served as the main source of data; other data included the video clips of the writing process, student writing samples, and the researchers’ notes. The result showed that students used corpus tools and the bilingual dictionary for different purposes. They tended to use a bilingual dictionary when information on word form and word meaning was needed. When searching for information related to word usage, collocation information, and grammar patterns, they chose corpus tools more often than a bilingual dictionary. However, they also turned to corpus tools for meaning and form when the bilingual dictionary failed to provide clear word meanings, when they needed to search for word strings, and when they needed to just confirm an intuition regarding either word form or word meaning. This study provides empirical data that help to better understand how corpus tools contribute to EFL writing.

Keywords:

• concordancers
• corpus tools
• stimulus recall interview
• EFL writing

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for their valuable comments on the earlier drafts of this paper. We would also like to thank the developers of the corpus tools in this study, for designing such useful online tools and for generously leaving them open to all users.

Notes

1. GEPT refers to the General English Proficiency Test developed in Taiwan. Its intermediate-level writing section consists of translating a short paragraph from Chinese to English and writing one or two paragraphs on an assigned topic. Students need to achieve 80 points out of 100 to pass.

2. TOTALrecall (http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw/totalrecall/totalrecall/totalrecall.aspx?funcID=1) is part of the CANDLE project (Corpora and NLP for Digital Learning of English), developed by a group of researchers in Taiwan (http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw/newcandle/Home_E.asp)

3. VLC (http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/) is developed and maintained by Dr Chris Greaves of the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong.

4. Tango (http://candle.fl.nthu.edu.tw/collocation/webform2.aspx?funcID=9) is part of the CANDLE project too.

5. NTNU CCRS: this system was closed in 2010, but a CCRS with a similar interface could be found at http://140.122.83.241/wiki/default.htm.

6. The Yahoo Online Dictionary: http://tw.dictionary.yahoo.com/

7. The Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

8. This is the mechanism the researcher used to locate the video files of the online writing process and the verbatim transcripts of the stimulus recalls and interviews. “S5, W2,01:52:34, P23” means it is Max's (S5) stimulus recall on his second writing task (W2), and the reported content can be found in the audio file at 1 hour, 52 minutes, 34 seconds, and on page 23 of the verbatim transcript.

Table A1. students' profile.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shu-Li Lai

Shu-Li Lai is an assistant professor in the General Education Center at National Taipei College of Business, Taiwan. Her research interests include computer-assisted language learning, second language acquisition and EFL writing.

Hao-Jan Howard Chen

Howard Hao-Jan Chen (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is a professor of applied linguistics at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. He also serves as the Director of Mandarin Training Center. His research interests include second language acquisition, computer-assisted language learning and corpus linguistics.