The texts below are responses from individual members of the Language and Study Skills teaching team after I asked for reflections on how well they felt the lessons went that introduced students to corpus tools, and how much impact they had on the learning process.
Generally, the students did not find these apps very user friendly. It was a bit overwhelming for them and they were hesitant to engage with them. In general, they just did not seem to want to work with them.
I found that highlighting the Sketch Engine's use as a thesaurus in the British Academic Written English Corpus for reporting verbs particularly helpful, as students often repeat the same ones when citing authors, or struggle to differentiate meanings.
The Sketch Engine fitted in really nicely for the Week 9 Speaking 'review' class, as that was the last weekend before they submitted their Argumentative final drafts. I highlighted that the three pages in the preparation materials enabled them to practice and ensure meeting three of the assessment criteria:
Page 1: identifying and discussing main arguments
Page 2: discerning the reliability of sources
Page 3: checking grammar and vocabulary
(maybe one more page on structure would help, though wouldn't fit into a 1hr session)
So those preparation materials were really useful to point out the editing process for the argumentative essay in line with the assessment criteria, and I advised students to look back over their argumentative essays over that weekend and check and edit using those techniques; The Sketch Engine being a tool for broadening their range of vocabulary and checking accuracy of grammar.
As I didn't teach the first 6 weeks, I'm not sure what earlier work was done by the previous teacher, but I think having a session practising using its various functions in the first week, with recaps around the time of essay deadlines as a device for editing essay, is a great idea for the course.
Hopefully that provides some evidence of impact or useful feedback, though really more from a teacher’s rather than student’s perspective. I didn't ask the students directly the extent to which they used the Sketch Engine; I can only say they seemed approving of the Week 9 Speaking 'review' session.
I remember the first time I introduced Sketch Engine to my first group, it didn't go well. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, I think there was a lot of information about prestige lexis beforehand and we moved through it quite slowly (this was in a face-to-face class just before lockdown), so by the time they got to the online tool they were tired and they didn't see the connection (and I probably didn't lead into it very well.) I could see the usefulness of it but I didn't present that to them. On the other hand, I think embedding it within Prestige Lexis was perhaps a problem since it set it up (for some students) as a tool to use for 'difficult' words or if you're only interested in linguistics, rather than showing how some verbs etc. can have multiple meanings/collocations and that academic language is a mix of this high/low language. However, after teaching it twice, I wouldn't necessarily remove it from this session but I would just flip it to the first activity: perhaps giving the students some language getting them to identify whether it is high/low (this is assuming some flipped classroom approach), then asking students how they would use them (or how they should be used) and ending on introducing Sketch Engine. It then becomes a tool for highlighting gaps in knowledge. Then, going into the prestige lexis discussion would make a better connection.
I should stress this wouldn't have been possible with the online sessions of one hour and I followed the same process, but the second time around I was able to get to it quickly since the students were supposed to have completed many tasks beforehand. This time they could see the purpose, but it still had that 'useful for linguists, not academic language' feel.
Did it have an impact on learning? The Sketch Engine didn't (for the above reasons) but mainly because with online tools you need to return to them regularly within sessions (or as part of flipped preparation.) If you don't, then the impact will always be minimal. The second time around, the SKELL tool had some impact purely because it is very simple (visually) for the students to understand. They can put in a word and see multiple uses in context. This made it easier to share on a screen and use in a session with the online tools highlighting and pointing out different sentences to students. Again, I didn't use it repeatedly for illustrative purposes (which I think would work if tutors were encouraged to do so), so I don't honestly feel that it had a long-lasting impact on the students learning.
Overall, I think these could be useful and have an impact, but with something like Sketch Engine it's about where and when you introduce it (and making it, perhaps, the key task in a session) and with SKELL it is about repeated use in sessions (perhaps for error correction or as a link in feedback?)
I certainly introduced the students to Sketch Engine but found the usual response/engagement with it to be more of a passing novelty rather than something that the students actually took onboard at any point. This has been my previous experience with attempting to integrate corpora before. It seems to be something that I've got more out of than the students.
I suspect this may have something to do with the level of the students themselves and also that things which have been introduced but then rarely feature in subsequent lessons is quickly disregarded as not being useful for them. I think something like the Sketch Engine would have more value if it becomes a feature of the course itself, then they might realise the benefits of using it and what it has to offer over time.