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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.98-130
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 29 Jul 2024 Revised 17 Dec 2024 Accepted 15 Jan 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202501.98

The Effects of a Usage-driven Feedback Approach on Students’ Use of Functional Lexical Chunks

Kenn Arcenal
Ph.D. Student, Department of English Education, Korea University kennarcenal@korea.ac.kr


© 2025 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

There has been a consensus among language researchers regarding the apparent advantages of learning lexical chunks. Conventional pedagogies (e.g., memorizing, drilling, input flooding, typographic enhancement) have been utilized in diverse research to determine an effective way of raising students’ awareness of and encoding chunks; however, these practices have produced mixed results. Most of these studies have positioned learners in a passive role and have focused on increasing breadth with retention of forms as the primary goal (Boers and Lindstromberg 2009). Furthermore, the students’ meaningful use of language and feedback from the teacher was rarely considered during the process. Considering how memory works, these conditions could explain the learner’s low retention rate and inconsistencies in the literature. The present exploratory, mixed-methods, classroom-based study veers away from the traditional ways of raising awareness of lexical chunks. It investigates the effects of a usage-driven feedback approach on lexical chunk use and uptake, which emphasizes the value of meaningful production and the importance of receiving feedback in the creation process. Four college students with different proficiency levels in an English-speaking course were investigated for ten weeks. Results from several quantitative and qualitative measures revealed that the function-focused production tasks accompanied by productive feedback from the facilitator and the students led to a significant increase in lexical chunk use.

Keywords:

lexical chunks, feedback, usage-driven feedback approach, second language acquisition

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