The use of corpus consultation to enhance the acquisition of l2 English infinitive and gerund complements among low English proficiency l1 Thai learners

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how the corpus-based teaching approach could enhance L2 acquisition of English infinitive and gerund complements among low English proficiency L1 Thai young learners. Sixty-four secondary students were equally divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group learned English verbal complements through the corpus approach, while the control group did through the traditional teaching approach. Data were collected through a pretest, a posttest, and an interview. The results from the pretest revealed quite low scores on English infinitive and gerund complements in both participant groups and, based on the statistical data from the T distribution, there was no significant difference regarding their English verbal complement background knowledge (p > .05). After the treatment, both groups showed satisfactory results in the posttest. The participants in the experimental group showed significant improvement from the pretest (x̄ = 1.19) to the posttest (x̄ = 7.69), p < .01, while the control group could also perform significantly better in the posttest (x̄ = 4.06) than the pretest (x̄ = 1.03), p < .01. The findings suggested the merit of both teaching approaches. However, what is worth observing is that the experimental group could get significantly higher posttest scores (x̄ = 7.69) than the control group (x̄ = 4.06), p < .01, indicating that the corpus approach is more effective than the traditional teaching approach. Moreover, qualitative data from the interview corroborated the statistical results in that the experimental group had positive attitudes toward the corpus-based teaching approach. The results were in line with those in previous research (Dazdarevic et al., 2014; Poocharoensil, 2012; and Kulsitthiboon and Pongpairoj, 2018). The implications of this research were twofold: SLA and pedagogy. That is, the findings shed some light on the effectiveness of the corpus-based teaching approach on L2 acquisition of grammar.