Learners' Perceived Development of Spoken Grammar Awareness after Corpus-Informed Instruction: An Exploration of Learner Diaries

Abstract

Developing spoken grammar awareness is a crucial first step in fostering noticing habits (Schmidt, 1990) in second language learners. Classroom instruction using corpus-informed materials is an ideal way to assist this development, given that these materials are based on research which informs us about the most frequent forms and uses of spoken grammar and thus materials can help us to make frequent forms more salient to learners. However, as Badger (2018) notes, few studies seek to investigate what students actually notice outside of the classroom, following instruction. In this qualitative study, we aimed to address this gap by giving four intermediate learners instruction sessions using corpus-informed materials to teach three aspects of spoken grammar which corpora show are very frequent (vague language, ellipsis, and discourse markers). Following instruction, learner diaries were submitted over a three-week period to track (a) whether learners noticed the spoken grammar forms focused upon during the instruction in their day-to-day conversations in the UK, (b) whether they used any of the forms, and (c) the extent to which they perceived that this awareness helped them to have more successful conversations. The diaries were supported by a qualitative questionnaire administered 2 weeks after the final diary was submitted. Results show that learners reported noticing the forms in a variety of conversations, although this awareness was not always accurate. They also reported making some use of the forms themselves and the general perception was that the language taught was useful to them.