DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2018.38
title: The effectiveness of data-driven learning (DDL) on teaching English collocations to Thai EFL students

description: The collocational knowledge is definitely significant for language learners as it provides them with an opportunity to master English lexical knowledge and enhance their communicative competence. Despite its significance, many scholars have further reported that a lot of EFL and ESL learners, irrespective of their English proficiency level, have encountered several problems about learning and producing English collocations. Consequently, the importance of teaching and learning collocations should be emphasized in English language classrooms with the aim to help learners effectively deal with such difficulties. However, a comprehensive conclusion regarding the effectiveness and practicality of a particular collocation teaching and learning method for learners with different language proficiency has not been extensively confirmed. The present study, therefore, aims to bridge these gaps by evaluating the effectiveness of Data-driven Learning (DDL) on teaching English collocations to Thai EFL students as well as investigating the learning strategies and problem-solving strategies utilized by low-proficiency and high-proficiency Thai EFL students during learning English collocations through DDL.To investigate the effectiveness of DDL on English collocation teaching and learning, 96 Thai EFL students divided into two proficiency groups with equal numbers were conveniently selected to attend 15-week collocation classes where they were assigned to autonomously follow DDL procedures and complete collocations exercises in order to learn the target collocations. The comparison between the pre-test scores and the post-test scores were statistically drew through the utilization of t-test to determine the effectiveness of DDL and the results of the present study confirm that DDL contributes to the development of collocational knowledge of both low-proficiency and high-proficiency Thai EFL students. Apart from the effectiveness of DDL on the development of collocational knowledge, the findings of the present study also show that the English proficiency levels of DDL learners might neither negatively nor positively affect the development level of their collocational knowledge because the result of the Pearson’s correlation coefficient comparing between English Proficiency Test scores and the gain scores of collocation tests reveals that there is no significant linear correlation between these two sets of data.In addition to the effectiveness of DDL, the learning strategies and problem-solving strategies utilized by Thai EFL students during learning English collocations through DDL are another investigated perspectives of the present study and the quantitative and qualitative data regarding these two perspectives were elicited through ‘Students’ Reflection’, ‘Can-do Statement Checklist’, ‘Think-aloud Task’, and ‘Semi-structured Interview’. The findings reveal that although both of the low-proficiency and the high-proficiency Thai EFL students could follow the traditional DDL procedures proposed by Johns (1990) with some difficulties, several learning strategies and problem-solving strategies were utilized to maximize the effectiveness of the application of DDL on English collocation learning. Moreover, Thai EFL students’ perspectives towards the application of DDL on English collocation learning are also investigated through the use of questionnaire and the semi-structured interview. The quantitative data collected from the questionnaire was triangulated with the qualitative data from the interview transcription for a comprehensive conclusion regarding Thai EFL students’ attitude towards learning English collocations through DDL. The results elicited from these two research instruments show that Thai EFL students have both positive and negative attitudes towards learning English collocations through DDL. Along with these attitudes, both low-proficiency and high-proficiency Thai EFL students considered DDL is a more effective and practical way to learn English collocations when compared to other learning methods.