Abstract
The recent development of authentic language data called corpora has made it possible for linguists to create more reliable dictionaries and do linguistic research. The resources are valuable in that they help students learn various lexical and grammatical patterns such as collocations. However, corpora are not used as mainstream teaching materials at schools. It is assumed that for those who haven’t had sufficient online language learning experiences, such as Japanese students, it could be difficult to appreciate the efficacy of these resources. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted regarding how students view the utilization and efficacy of these online language resources. This study aims to assess the utility of the corpus driven web-interface, SkELL (Sketch Engine for Language Learning) through students’ own evaluations of the tool, as part of an English course at their Japanese university. The major benefit observed by the students was the freedom to access a very large amount of raw English language data, which they can use to investigate various lexical and grammatical combinations related to their studies without additional cost. While the learning curve for SkELL is not as steep as traditional corpus tools, detailed guidance from instructors remains necessary to ensure students are able to take full advantage of the platform.
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Hirata, Y., Hirata, Y. (2018). Students’ Evaluation of SkELL: The ‘Sketch Engine for Language Learning’. In: Cheung, S., Kwok, Lf., Kubota, K., Lee, LK., Tokito, J. (eds) Blended Learning. Enhancing Learning Success. ICBL 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10949. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94505-7_30
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