Building up a learner corpus through creative nonfiction prose: An experimental study

With this research, it is aimed to contribute to the field by means of investigating the effects of a learner corpus based upon Creative Non-fiction Prose. The weak point of corpora studies are regarded as their providing artificial or receptive-only real life examples. Whereas, this research aims to prove that a corpus study can also stand for a creative way of teaching English as a foreign language. The population of this research is 95 intermediate level students from four different classes. A pre-test, created through the vocabulary items given in their course books, is given to the participants. Following the pre-test, two control groups and two experimental groups were randomly sampled. The control groups were just given a pre-test and post-test. Whereas, the experimental groups were given vocabulary items they might be familiar with from their course books of the first semester. But the vocabulary items were not given all together at one time. For each practice of the experiment, they were given a particular amount of items. One of the two experimental groups was acknowledged in how to use reference corpora sources in the computer lab. Then, they maintained their study through using these resources by themselves. Meanwhile, each member of the other experimental group was demanded to use these vocabulary items within a prose through using creative non-fiction. Completing each task, the writings of the students are collected and inserted in WordSmith 5 corpus program and practised in the classroom environment. As the treatments were over, a post test was applied to all four participant classes. The Independent Samples t ? Test results of the experimental group whose participants were required to take part in building up a learner corpus through creative nonfiction prose were significantly different when compared with the results of the other controlgroups and the other experimental group.Key words: Learner corpus, Reference corpora, Creative nonfiction prose, Computer mediated communication, Qualitative data, Quantitative data, Empirical research