THE EFFECT OF CORPUS-BASED INSTRUCTION ON THAI NURSING STUDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH LEXICAL COLLOCATION.

Abstract

: This experimental research study investigated the knowledge of Thai nursing students on lexical collocations extracted from a Sample Corpus of Nursing Research Articles (SCNRA) and examined the effect of a corpus-based instruction on the students’ performance. The participants were 51 fourth year nursing students from the Institute of Nursing, Suranaree University of Technology (SUT) in Thailand. The pre-test was administered, followed by a workshop on the target collocations and the post-test administered at the end. The results from the pre-test revealed the overall knowledge of the majority of the students was at a “Fair” level. The pre-test and the post-test results were compared using the paired samples t-test which showed a statistically significant improvement of the students’ performance in the total score (t(50) = (-11.75), p = <0.001) and in each of the three parts: part 1 (t(50) = (-7.47), p = <0.001); part 2 (t(50) = (-8.10), p = <0.001); and part 3 (t(50) = (-7.44), p = <0.001). In terms of the students’ performance, the majority of the students’ scores increased and put them one level higher in all parts from “Fair” to “Good”, except for part 3 where the level of performance was improved from “Poor” to “Fair”. The results imply that both the test and the corpus-based instruction of collocations are beneficial for the learners, thus should be encouraged.