ALTERNATIVE VOCABULARY ASSESSMENT: USING CONCORDANCE LINE ACTIVITIES FOR TESTING LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE

The last decade has witnessed a strong impact of emerging technologies on language pedagogy due to the developments in the computer technologies. The use of authentic linguistic examples through corpora and concordance based activities is defined as data-driven learning and it exposes the students to examples of more realistic language than invented or artificial examples. Therefore, this experimental study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the use of a concordance software and concordance lines as a pedagogical tool in vocabulary assessment at a state university in Turkey in 2015 academic year. The materials used in the study were specialized corpora, a concordance software and treatment handouts. The corpora were analyzed by means of AntConc 3.2.4w. An independent samples T-test, was conducted over the students’ GPAs, MANOVA and Standard Multiple Regression Analysis were conducted to see whether experimental and control groups were equivalent in terms of the knowledge of target vocabulary items.  Thirdly, Independent Samples T-test for the three semi-controlled paragraph writing assessment and lastly descriptive statistics of the student questionnaire were administered. By the use of computer-generated concordances in the classroom, students explored regularities of patterning in L2. Corpus-based DDL is a great alternative since it emphasizes the exploration and discovery of learning process. By integrating technology into curricular programs, the lust of digital natives for hands-on learning is satisfied as well. Key words: corpus-based approach; concordance lines; vocabulary instruction; data-driven learning