ABSTRACT
The study presents a project to develop a multimodal corpus tool for young English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, aimed at assisting their English learning in context through data-driven learning (DDL). Multimodal corpora would especially benefit young L2 learners as multimodal information provides a “variety of cues” (Levy, 2009, p. 85) that assist children’s comprehension. I report on a case study investigating the incorporation of DDL during teacher education in teaching English to young learners (TEYL), using both a specialised multimodal corpus and a general corpus. A questionnaire conducted with participants reveals benefits of incorporating DDL activities into teacher training, as well as challenges to the successful incorporation of DDL into the curriculum. Results indicate that the initiative is useful not only in raising pre-service teachers’ awareness of English language features but also in persuading future teachers of the usefulness of direct corpus consultation for teaching in the future.
