Examining in-service senior high school English teachers’ perspectives on corpus use and the effects of corpus training

Abstract

Given the benefits of incorporating corpora into language learning, particularly in developing students’ abilities to observe and analyze language data, this study investigated Taiwanese in-service senior high school English teachers’ corpus literacy, their application of corpus tools in teaching, and the effects of an online corpus workshop. Conducted in two stages, the first involved collecting 151 teachers’ perceptions of corpus literacy and its applications from 141 schools across Taiwan. The second stage invited teachers across Taiwan to participate in an online corpus workshop, where corpus-based teaching and two tools (SKELL and Sketch Engine) were introduced, along with hands-on activities. Following the workshop, the participants completed a post-survey. The analysis of the pre-survey responses revealed a positive attitude toward but limited understanding of corpus use among teachers before attending the workshop. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, used to analyze the pre- and post-survey responses, showed significant improvements in the teachers’ corpus literacy and application skills after the workshop. The findings of this study offer valuable insights into corpus use among in-service teachers in various contexts. Future research should explore the further integration of corpus tools into classrooms and include in-depth interviews for more comprehensive insights.