Increasing Lexical Awareness through Data-Driven Learning: Polysemy in EFL Pedagogy

초록

Many L2 students struggle to use vocabulary effectively and flexibly in a variety of situations. For learners to recognize words’ different meanings in diverse circumstances, they need to be exposed to diverse contexts that manifest various meanings of the word. Traditional vocabulary learning (TL) tools such as dictionaries and online translators, however, are limited in raising the learner's awareness of meanings beyond the first two or three of polysemy, and data-driven learning (DDL) has been recommended as an alternative teaching method. This study, thus, explores the efficacy of data-driven learning (DDL) using concordance in acquiring polysemous word knowledge. Fifty middle school students were assigned to either DDL or TL condition and had vocabulary learning sessions for the respective condition. The participants’ acquisition of polysemous word knowledge was examined in terms of their explicit and implicit knowledge of the words in the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest. The results indicated that the DDL group outperformed the TL condition in only the implicit knowledge test in the immediate post-test. However, the delayed post-test showed no significant difference in retention of the knowledge. The findings are discussed in light of the use of DDL in vocabulary learning and the use of corpus as a pedagogical tool. © 2022 KASELL All rights reserved.

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