Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Discourses on EFL Teaching Approaches

This study explicates the lexico-semantic features of the discourses constructed by EFL student teachers regarding language teaching approaches and methods. Utilizing corpus linguistics methods, the research explores a specialized corpus comprised of reflective essays produced by forty-one EFL student teachers in the context of Ukrainian teacher education. Techniques such as keyword analysis, n-grams, collocations, and KWIK (key word in context) were sequentially applied to complement the data. The keyword profile of the corpus enabled the extraction of the main semantic fields, including approaches and methods, education and instructional processes, agents, linguistic aspects, language skills, and techniques. The n-grams analysis further detailed that the participants were familiar with a repertoire of approaches and methods. Evidence garnered from collocations and concordance analyses substantiated that the respondents self-identified with current language teaching approaches and believed in the utility of principled eclecticism. Nevertheless, a minor segment of respondents gave precedence to traditional language teaching. Despite a lexically rich representation of the semantic field of EFL approaches and methods, the related semantic field of techniques was underrepresented in the corpus, indicating challenges associated with the procedures underlying specific approaches in the instructional process. This highlights the need for guided training in the application of contemporary language teaching principles.