Learning collocations via a data-driven approach: ESP students’ perspectives

The use of corpora in the teaching of languages has increased in the past decade. Data-driven learning (DDL) has proven to be useful for increasing learner autonomy and for raising awareness about language usage. Many researchers have applied DDL in English for academic purposes (EAP) contexts, but rarely in English for specific purposes (ESP) contexts. This study aimed to increase medical students’ awareness of noun collocations and the most frequent types of such collocations via DDL activities, as well as to evaluate the learners’ views regarding DDL. The British National Corpus (BNC) sub-corpus of medical sciences was used for this purpose. Twenty-nine advanced medical students participated in two different awareness-raising activities during eight sessions, and five of the learners were interviewed. The results indicated overall satisfaction with the DDL activities, and about 85% of learner responses were correct. DDL activities appeared to be extremely promising for encouraging learner autonomy and increasing language awareness, particularly regarding collocations. These findings show that using corpora in ESP instruction can be an effective teaching approach and could be adapted for use in other specialized fields.