Publication: DDL learning in ESP teaching: an exploratory study on multi-word unit usage in business letters
Authors
Marín Pérez, María José ; Aguado Jiménez, María Pilar
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Publisher
University of Belgrade [University Publisher] Faculty of Economics
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2024.12.2.3
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
© 2023. The authors. This document is made available under the CC-BY 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0/
This document is the published version of a published work that appeared in final form in ESP Today.
To access the final work, see DOI: https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2024.12.2.3
Abstract
The present research explores the potential benefits that corpus-based instruction might
have on the acquisition and usage of multi-word units (MWUs) in business English. To
that end, a data-driven learning (DDL) methodology was designed and implemented to
teach such units to a group of 55 informants divided into an experimental and a control
group. The experimental group was taught about the usage of MWUs in business letter
writing through the exposure and management of an ad hoc corpus of such expressions,
while the control group went through the traditional sessions designed to that purpose.
The comparison between the pre- and post-test results suggests that the experimental
group excelled the control one in the proportion of correct MWUs used in their letters
(48.19% of the units retrieved against 20.15%, respectively). On a qualitative level, the
variety of MWUs used by the former was also greater, covering a larger number of
functional categories than the control group, where we found almost 3/4 of the
expressions falling under one single category. Finally, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U
test was also run on the data related to individual achievement, pointing at the statistical
significance (p≤0.001 for both groups) of the differences found on a global level and
supporting our perception on the benefits of corpus-based instruction.
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Citation
ESP Today, Vol. 12 (2). 2023: 245-268.
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