ABSTRACT
The chapter reports on a study exploring the use of data-driven learning as a way of developing the phraseological competence of L2 learners attending secondary school. The study followed a quasi-experimental design in which 15 non-transparent phrases were presented to two groups of L1 Polish learners of English representing two different instructional conditions: paper-based DDL and a dictionary-based approach. A control group with no experimental treatment was also included for comparison purposes. The target phrases (e.g. “by far” or “straight away”) were selected from Martinez and Schmitt’s (2012) PHRASE list, and learners’ knowledge of these items was measured by means of two tests: a multiple-choice test of meaning recognition and an L1-L2 translation test of meaning recall. The design also included a questionnaire tapping into students’ perceptions of the treatments. Results revealed that DDL was more effective in enhancing learners’ phraseological knowledge, leading to modest gains at both levels of phraseological mastery. The questionnaire data confirmed that corpus-based exercises were perceived as beneficial; however, strong positive attitudes towards the use of dictionaries were also found. The chapter discusses the benefits and challenges of introducing DDL to lower-level L2 students and concludes by discussing the implications of the study for secondary school language education.
