Promoting Second Language Writers’ Error Corrections with Corpus: A Case Study

Abstract

How corpora can be used to facilitate second language writing has been of great interest. Previous studies have revealedbenefits of this application in non-native English students’ writing development. However, how corporacanbe used for self error-corrections in essay writing, especially the pattern of corpus consultation, has been little studied.This paper examines the effects of corpus concordancing on error-correctionsand student attitudes toward such corpus use in essay writing. Three ESL graduate studentsenrolled in a US Midwestern university were invited to write three essays that were randomly selected from the TOEFL-iBT essay-question database. The purpose of the essay tasks was three-fold: Essay 1: to assess students’ writing competence before training; Essay 2: to examine students’application of corpus concordancingto revise Essay 1; Essay 3: to evaluate students’ use of corpus consultation to write another essay after training. The results showed that in Essay 2, the students corrected the most “word choices” and in Essay 3, they tended to prevent poor word choices. In addition, the students perceived the corpus training as beneficial to self error-corrections in essays. This paper concludes with pedagogical and research implications.