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A comparison of contextualized, decontextualized and corpus-informed vocabulary instruction: A quasi-experimental study
Authors: Ihsan Unaldı, Mehmet Bardakcı, Kadriye Dilek Akpınar & Ferhat Dolas
Number of views: 817
This experimental study tries to compare the effectiveness of corpus-informed,
contextualized and decontextualized vocabulary instruction in an EFL setting. The
participants were 69 high school pre-intermediate language learners in a state
school. During the 8-week experimentation process, one of the experimental groups
was treated with corpus-informed instruction while the other one studied the same
target vocabulary through decontextualized vocabulary activities. With the control
group, on the other hand, sessions where the learners were exposed to the target
words in meaningful reading contexts were carried out. Before these sessions, the
corpus group was trained about the rationale behind concordances and how to use
them. A multiple-choice vocabulary test which was composed of the target words
was administered both before and after the treatments. Because of its convenience in
experimental settings, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed. The
results of the statistical analyses indicated that the group that studied the target
words through decontextualized learning activities scored a significantly higher
mean in the post-test when compared to the other two groups. The group with
corpus-informed instruction also displayed some progress, albeit statistically
insignificant. Interestingly, the control group, which was treated with contextualized
vocabulary activities, made the least progress.