Effects of corpus based instruction on verb noun collocation use

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY ∞0∞ DANG DUC TUE EFFECTS OF CORPUS-BASED INSTRUCTION ON VERB-NOUN COLLOCATION USE MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL HO CHI MINH CITY, 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY ∞0∞ DANG DUC TUE EFFECTS OF CORPUS-BASED INSTRUCTION ON VERB-NOUN COLLOCATION USE Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Major code: 14 01 11 MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL Supervisor: DR VU HOA NGAN HO CHI MINH CITY, 2022 TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH KHOA ĐÀO TẠO SAU ĐẠI HỌC CỘNG HỊA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập – Tự – Hạnh phúc GIẤY XÁC NHẬN Tôi tên là: ĐẶNG ĐỨC TUỆ Ngày sinh: 04.10.1984 Nơi sinh: An Giang Chuyên ngành: Lý luận Phương pháp dạy học Bộ môn Tiếng Anh Mã học viên: 1881401110041 Tôi đồng ý cung cấp tồn văn thơng tin luận văn tốt nghiệp hợp lệ quyền cho Thư viện trường đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh Thư viện trường đại học Mở Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh kết nối tồn văn thơng tin luận văn tốt nghiệp vào hệ thống thông tin khoa học Sở Khoa học Cơng nghệ Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh Ký tên ĐẶNG ĐỨC TUỆ i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby certify that this thesis entitled “Effects of Corpus-based Instruction on Verb-Noun Collocations Use” is my own work Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis does not contain material published elsewhere, or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma No other’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree in any other tertiary institution HoChiMinh city, 2022 ĐẶNG ĐỨC TUỆ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The thesis was a long journey to go through This thesis seems minor work to someone else, but honestly it was a long-term and daunting challenge to me because of the Covid period, workplace changes and a myriad of other bottlenecks I would like to take this opportunities to deepen my gratitude to all those who offered me invaluable help First and foremost, sincerely, I am deeply indebted to my thesis supervisor, Dr VU HOA NGAN, Deputy Head of Department of English, International University, Vietnam National University HCMC Her great patience and comprehensive insightful knowledge gave careful justification for my inexperienced research skills I would like to thank her for unflagging support and great patience for a long time Second but very importantly, all of Blessings I have been bestowed, one of which was my family who waited and encouraged me to overcome difficulties By virtues of these, I was bolstered and braced in the face of depression Next is my thankfulness to my friends, especially two classmates, Ms Phuong and Ms Thao Without them, I would have been in mental trouble Also, I would like deepen my gratitude to Dr Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha from HCMC Open University, a person I had not known, who is warm-hearted and kind She encouraged me to keep going Without her help, undoubtedly my thesis could not have been completed In addition, I would like to present my thankfulness to Graduate School of Open University HoChiMinh city, valuable feedback from examiners and academic officials who offer great help for me to the attainment of this thesis I would like to say thank you to them all iii ABSTRACT The accomplishment of technology helpfully offers education great opportunities to explore writing and speaking patterns Consquently, this renders linguists capable of understanding phrases and language use, among which corpusbased instruction has become increasingly popular One of corpus-based work has contributed subtantially to linguistics is collocation-related research As classified, collocations which are often associated with terms such as “formulaic language” or “prefabricated chunk” can be devided into various types Verb-noun collocations are word combinations found with the most mistakes made by language learners This thesis made endeavor to investigate the feasibility of corpus-based applications on learning collocations In pursuit of this, the study elaborates collocation learning of groups of college students, one of which experienced experimental treatment This group searched for collocations in the website of British National Corpus; additionally, they also practiced with exercises for a long time Having read sentence samples, students pinpointed meaning and collocation use To be brief, the study results were obtained by administering the pretest, the posttest, and the questionnaire of learners’ attitude towards the instruction based on corpus data In terms of the study’s benefits, this study can give rise to collocation learning in colleges; moreover, findings from this study gain insight into corpus-based applications in classrooms In addition, this study’s research can greatly facilitate collocation teaching, and the attitude’s findings can reflect students’ perspectives towards the instruction through corpus data albeit with both merits and demerits iv TABLE OF CONTENT Page 1.1 Statement of the problem 1.2 Goals of the study 1.3 Significance of the study 1.4 Structure of this thesis .7 1.5 Chapter summary 2.1 Collocations 2.1.1 Definitions of collocations 2.1.2 Overview of L2 collocations 17 2.1.3 Verb-noun collocations 18 2.1.4 Discussion on a working definition of collocations 19 2.1.5 Discussion on verb-noun collocations 19 2.2 Corpus- based instructions 20 2.2.1 Corpora definition and development 20 2.2.2 Corpus-driven approach, corpus-based instructions, and data-driven learning 21 2.2.3 Previous studies into corpus-based instructions and DDL 24 2.2.4 Corpus studies in Vietnamese conditions .26 2.2.5 Previous studies into learning difficulties in corpus-based instruction 27 2.3 Learners' attitudes 30 2.3.1 Affective aspect of attitude 31 2.3.2 Cognitive aspect of attitude 31 2.3.3 Behavioral aspect of attitudes 31 2.3.4 Previous studies into attitudes towards learning with corpus .32 2.4 Research gaps 33 2.5 Chapter summary 36 v 3.1 Research design 38 3.2 Research participants 40 3.3 Research instruments and materials 42 3.3.1 The pretest and the posttest 42 3.3.2 Scoring and rubrics .47 3.3.3 Discussion about the reliablity, validity and feasibility 48 3.3.4 Justification of choosing verb-noun collocations 49 3.3.5 Teaching materials 50 3.3.6 The questionnaire into learners' attitudes .57 3.3.7 Justification of the questionnaire used in this study 59 3.4 Data Resources 60 3.5 Data Collection Procedures 61 3.5.1 Quantitative data collection for RQ1 into corpus instruction’s influence on collocation use 61 3.5.2 Quantitative data collection for RQ2 into leaners’ attitudes towards the corpus instruction 64 3.6 Data Analysis 65 3.6.1 Quantitative analysis relating to Research Question (RQ1) 65 3.6.2 Quantitative analysis of questionnaire scores (RQ2) 66 3.7 Ethical issues and permission .67 3.8 Chapter summary 67 4.1 The influence of corpus instruction on collocation use (Research question 1) 69 4.1.1 The distribution of the Pretest and Posttest scores 69 4.1.2 The Pretest mean of the Control Group and the Pretest mean of the Experimental Group 72 4.1.3 Effect Size of the Experimental Group and the Control Group 73 vi 4.1.4 Comparison within Control Group of the Pretest and the Posttest scores .74 4.1.5 Comparison within the Experimental group between the Pretest and the Posttest scores 75 4.2 Attitudes towards corpus instruction (Research question 2) 75 4.2.1 Affective aspect 78 4.2.2 Cognitive aspect 78 4.2.3 Behavioral aspect 78 4.3 Chapter summary 79 5.1 The influence of corpus instruction on verb-noun collocation use (Research question 1) 80 5.2 Learners' attitudes towards corpus instruction (Research question 2) 82 5.3 Chapter summary 83 6.1 Summary of key findings 84 6.2 Conclusions .85 6.2.1 For Research Question .85 6.2.2 For Research Question .86 6.3 Limitations 86 6.4 Implications 87 6.4.1 For teachers 87 6.4.2 For researchers 87 6.4.3 For students 88 6.5 Chapter summary 88