Correcting Language Errors in EFL Writing by the Use of COCA

Abstract

This study explores the use of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) by a cohort of intermediate EFL writers to see if, and to what extent they used corpus consultation to mitigate language errors, the problems they encountered in the process, and how they reacted to the use of COCA. This study draws some conclusions based on the data collected from twelve EFL writers’ written drafts before and after corpus consultation, their records of corpus inquiries, interview transcripts, and a survey on the use of the corpus. First, frequent users of COCA seemed to correct lexicogrammatical errors via corpus consultation while the less frequent users of COCA tended to rely on other resources for such error correction. Second, most students had problems with identifying the error types, analyzing, and interpreting the concordance output. However, with more training on the use of the corpus and more time allowed to correct errors, these problems seemed to be ameliorated. Finally, despite the negative responses from the less frequent users, the majority of the students were positive toward the use of the corpus. In light of these findings, some pedagogical implications and suggestions are provided.