Online corpus tools in scholarly writing: a case of EFL postgraduate student

• Main Authors: Kotamjani, Sedigheh Shakib, Razavi, Ommehoney Fazel, Hussin, Habsah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Center of Science and Education 2017
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/62589/1/CORPUS.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/62589/; https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1151553.pdf

Some studies have reported the positive outcome of using concordancers and dictionaries in (ESL) context. This study aims to examine how an EFL writer consulted with concordancers and dictionaries along with Google and Google Scholar when engaging in academic writing at university level. The researcher investigated a non-English-major postgraduate student corpus consultation over five months. The researcher provided a toolkit including corpus tools; concordancers, collocation dictionaries, thesaurus, Google, in combination with traditional reference resources such as monolingual and bilingual online dictionaries. The participant received a three-session training to consult with different resources while writing research paper. Real-time data, stimulated recall interview, participants’ writing and query logs served as the main sources of data. Results showed that the participant was aware of the applicability of each corpus tool. He could successfully solve 604 linguistic problems, and promoted his linguistic awareness. It is implied that corpus tools have the potential to assist EFL writers in proofreading and editing the surface levels of their writing.