DÜŞÜK SEVİYEDE İNGİLİZCE BİLGİSİNE SAHİP, YABANCI DİLİ İNGİLİZCE OLAN ÖĞRENCİLERİN DERLEME DAYALI DİLBİLGİSİ ÖĞRENİMİ HAKKINDAKİ GÖRÜŞLERİ

Bu nitel çalışmanın birincil amacı, Brigham Young Üniversitesiİngiliz Milli Derlemi (BYU-BNC) veya küçük bir derlemle çalışan AntConc (ücretsiz kelime dizini programı) ile öğrenim gören düşük seviyede İngilizce bilgisine sahip öğrencilerin dilbilgisi başarı ve tutumlarının ölçüldüğü nicel bir çalışmada ortaya koydukları olumsuz tutumlarının sebeplerini anlamaktır. Çalışmanın ikincil amacı, katılımcıların derlem araçlarını kullanarak dilbilgisi edinmeye karşı gösterdikleri tutumlar hakkında daha detaylı bilgiler edinmektir. Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi, Bilgisayar ve Öğretimi Teknolojileri Eğitimi Bölümünde öğrenim gören birinci sınıf katılımcıları arasından yedi gönüllü katılımcı seçmek için amaçlı örnekleme metodu kullanıldı. Yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme yoluyla toplanan veriler içerik analizi yapıldıktan sonra ana ve alt kategorilere ayrıldı. Bu analizde açık, eksensel ve seçici kodlama yöntemleri sırasıyla kullanılmıştır. Kodlama listesinde ortaya çıkan ana başlıklar şu şekildedir: İngilizce geçmişi, derlem araçlarının değerlendirilmesi, dersin değerlendirilmesi, öğrenme sürecine etkisi olan dış faktörler, derlem ve İngilizce çalışma kitabının karşılaştırılması, öz değerlendirme, öğretmenin değerlendirilmesi, sınıf arkadaşlarının değerlendirilmesi, İngilizce'ye olan genel tutum ve derlem tabanlı öğrenmenin geliştirilmesi için öneriler. Katılımcıların çoğu aslında gelecekte de derlem ile İngilizce öğrenmeye karşı ilgililerdi fakat öncelikle temel İngilizce bilgilerini geliştirmeye ihtiyaç duydular

PERCEPTIONS OF LOWER LEVEL EFL STUDENTS ON CORPUS-BASED GRAMMAR LEARNING

The primary purpose of this qualitative study is to understand the reasons underlying students' negative perceptions of corpus use in a quantitative study, which assessed the grammar achievement and attitudes of lower-level EFL students who were taught with a corpus tool, which was either BYU-BNC or AntConc 3.2.1 which is run with a small corpus. The secondary purpose of this study is to acquire more detailed information about the attitudes of participants towards learning English grammar with corpus tools. A purposive sampling method was used to select seven volunteer freshman participants majoring in the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology at Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey. The data, collected with semi-structured interviews, were content-analyzed by coding data, identifying and relating the categories and sub-categories, that is, open, axial and selective coding were conducted respectively. Accordingly, the following main categories were developed from the coding lists: English background, evaluation of the corpus tool, evaluation of the lesson, external factors on learning, comparison of corpus and the English textbooks, self-evaluation, evaluation of the teacher, evaluation of the classmates, attitude towards English, and advice on improving corpus-based learning. Most of the participants were indeed interested in learning English with corpus use in the future, but they first needed to develop their fundamental English knowledge.Many countries are integrating computer and Internet use in teaching contexts, which provides learners with several facilities, such as learner autonomy skills, visual learning, and student-centered learning contexts. In China, the government promotes integration of computer networking in classrooms. Similarly, Turkish education system attaches importance to English learning in schools starting from the primary to the higher school education. Accordingly, smart boards, and tablet use have been encouraged in Turkish schools. Computer labs have been common in many higher education where learners develop research skills and improve their knowledge. The developments are not limited to the computerized infrastructure of the teaching environments. The advancement has influenced teaching methods as well. Recent developments in English language teaching address corpus linguistics, which is a methodology based on the analysis of electronically collected texts. Corpus based language teaching makes use of language processing programs in a way that learners expose to original texts derived from field specific contexts, such as journalism, medicine, or spoken language. These programs assist learners with their investigation of the linguistics properties of the texts. However, application of the method in language teaching has brought about several issues as to which type of participants are suitable for the method, what qualities a corpus must have, and how the learners must be trained. Aim The primary purpose of this qualitative study is to uncover the reasons underlying students' negative perceptions towards corpus use in a previously carried out quantitative study which assessed the grammar achievements and attitudes of lower level EFL students who were taught with two corpus tools, either BYU-BNC or AntConc 3.2.1 which is run with a small corpus. In this sense, the factors affecting training session, corpus based teaching, and effectiveness of the tools were examined. Also external factors were investigated for any possible reason for the negative attitude. The secondary purpose of this study is to acquire more information about the attitudes of participants towards learning English grammar with corpus tools. For one reason, participants’ insightful answer contribute to the implementation of the method with lower levels of EFL students. Method The qualitative study was carried out right after the quantitative study. A purposive sampling method was used to select volunteer freshman participants majoring in the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology at Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey. After the data was collected from semi-structured interview, seven records were chosen to be analyzed by considering the clear posture of attitude and content-rich data. Among them, there are four records from BYU-BNC and three records from AntConc group with both positive and negative attitudes. All the interviews were transcribed in a form which states the time, participants, question and answer, and four levels of coding for each answer. To reduce and manage the data, several revisions were performed. The data were coded into content related categories, that is, open, axial and selective coding were conducted. Findings The data analysis process from the coding lists resulted in the following main categories: English background, evaluation of the corpus tool, evaluation of the lesson, external factors on learning, comparison of corpus and the English textbooks, self-evaluation, evaluation of the teacher, evaluation of the classmates, attitude towards English, and advice on improving corpus-based learning. To go further with the findings, Conclusion The perceptions of participants about the method, appropriateness of the tools, and the contribution of the tools into learning indicate that corpus based grammar teaching need to be designed carefully especially while studying with lower level EFL students. Although a less carefully planned teaching may result in negative points, corpus samples and functions contributes to learners’ vocabulary knowledge, forming grammatical rules and interpretation skills. In addition, the corpus to be processed with the tools must be appropriate in terms of the difficulty level of the language. Accordingly, lower achievers need to study with more basic language, so that they could interpret and understand easily. Otherwise, it could cause them to lose their motivation. To sum up, most of the participants were indeed interested in learning English with corpus use in the future, but they first needed to develop their fundamental English knowledge

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