Abstract

This study examines the effects of corpus use on learning L2 collocations. The primary aim of this study was to investigate how the information extracted from corpus data helped learners memorize and output collocations. The effects of corpus use were examined by comparing the effects of dictionary use. 55 intermediate EFL learners from a university in Tokyo looked up verb-noun collocations by consulting BNC or dictionaries and wrote what they noticed. They also wrote short essays on the topics that were related to the collocations. To find their achievement, pre- and post-tests were used. The results show that corpus use promoted more output of collocations than dictionary use because of its many example sentences and frequency information of co-occurrence words. Corpus users focused on combinations of words and looked up high frequency collocations, while dictionary users focused on meanings, looked up and memorized more collocations. For more effective vocabulary teaching in DDL settings, the findings suggest that teachers need to consider the information learners access and process with corpus use and the specific effects of corpus use on L2 learning so that DDL can be a useful option in L2 classrooms.

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