Teaching Confusable Words to Iranian EFL Learners: A Corpus Based Approach
Yazd University, Iran
ABSTRACT
Confusable words such as confident and confidant refer to those lexical items which sound or look alike, but frequently cause confusion. The purpose of the current study, using a corpus-based approach to teaching confusable words, was to study the role of corpus in learning and retaining confusable words, to probe into the role of frequency in learning confusable words and to find out the learners' feedback and their attitude toward using corpus in learning confusable words. To this end, 43 male and female freshmen Iranian EFL learners, divided into two groups, served as the participants of this study. After 5 weeks of treatment using BNC corpus for the experimental group and traditional method for the control group, a post- test was conducted followed by a one-month delayed post-test. The results indicated that the use of corpus as a new trend was significantly helpful in teaching confusable words. The results also indicated that the use of corpus can be effective in retaining lexical items. However, the frequency effect was not significant. The findings of the study offer practical implications for the inclusion of corpora in the process of second language acquisition.
KEYWORDS
Corpus, Confusable Words, Retention, Acquisition