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Teaching ESP Through Data-Driven Learning: An Exploratory Study in Health Sciences Degrees

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Mediating Specialized Knowledge and L2 Abilities

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Abstract

Learning through linguistic corpora, also called data-driven learning or DDL (Johns, 1991), is an approach towards the teaching of foreign languages in which students discover the behaviour of a language through specific corpus-analytic tools. Being an inductive, student-centred methodology, DDL has proved to have numerous applications in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), among which is the learning of both specialized vocabulary and collocations. This research, which results from an educational innovation project, generally seeks to improve the teaching of ESP in the area of Health Sciences through DDL, and it particularly hinges on the exploration of the learners’ perceptions and attitudes towards this approach. This study first describes the DDL classroom methodology designed and then details the results obtained from a questionnaire completed by 262 participants who were asked to evaluate DDL in terms of the difficulty and usefulness of the tool used, the methodology in the classroom, and its advantages and applications for ESP learning. Overall, the best-rated aspects of DDL were, among others, learning autonomy, the role of the teacher as a guide, its usefulness for learning specialized terminology, and its potential for authentic reading practice and observing a word’s behaviour in context.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Jorge Soto-Almela

  2. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain

    Gema Alcaraz-Mármol

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  1. Jorge Soto-Almela
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  2. Gema Alcaraz-Mármol
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Correspondence to Jorge Soto-Almela .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities, National University of Distance Education, Madrid, Spain

    Linda Escobar

  2. Faculty of Humanities, National University of Distance Education, Madrid, Spain

    Ana Ibáñez Moreno

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Soto-Almela, J., Alcaraz-Mármol, G. (2021). Teaching ESP Through Data-Driven Learning: An Exploratory Study in Health Sciences Degrees. In: Escobar, L., Ibáñez Moreno, A. (eds) Mediating Specialized Knowledge and L2 Abilities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87476-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87476-6_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-87475-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-87476-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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