Slovak University Students´ Assessment of Corpus-Driven Grammar Teaching Materials

Abstract

Corpus linguistics with its tools has become influential in the area of foreign
languages teaching in recent decades; still, the direct use of corpus-driven
materials in the classroom seems to be restricted. The present paper deals with the
usability of corpus-driven teaching materials oriented on the specific field of
articles in the university surroundings. The research will strive to investigate the
effectiveness of corpus-driven teaching materials from several points of view. In
order to collect data for the research, the researcher utilized a questionnaire
consisting of 48 questions that was distributed to 94 university undergraduates.
After carrying out the statistical evaluation, the research results show that
university students are inclined to assess corpus-driven grammar teaching
materials positively mainly because of these aspects: the access to authentic
language, the access to information and topic that are relevant to the students, the
compatibility with the syllabus. On the other hand, factors like the development of
linguistic awareness, the development of critical thinking, the cooperation with
other students do not play a substantial role since their statistical significance
reaches only a negligible percentage. The study results indicate that it is advisable
to include a corpus linguistic course into the training of prospective teachers.