Corpus analysis and the achievement of learner autonomy in interaction

This chapter is about students working with corpora as hands-on analysts and focuses particularly on point c) above. It develops an approach introduced by Tim Johns in the early 90s, known as Data-Driven Learning (DDL, further developed in Jordan 1993; Bernardini 2000a, 2000b, 2002; and Sripicharn 2004, among others) and discusses some of its consequences for the achievement of learner autonomy in language learning. My discussion is based on: 1) observation of students working with corpora of electronic texts; 2) some thoughts about issues related to the development of students’ learning autonomy in interacting with the data, their peers and their teacher; and 3) reflections on the match between students’ corpus work and their achievement of ‘responsible participation’, an important issue in the development of language learning autonomy. The chapter is organised as follows: Section 2, following this introduction, summarises some features of the Data-Driven Learning approach; Section 3 shows that some principles found in the Data-Driven Learning approach are also found in discussions about the development of language learning autonomy and learners’ responsibility for their own learning; Section 4 presents two reports by students working on features of text and discourse with self-built corpora, and the students’ ‘discoveries’; Section 5 concludes and discusses the significance of these ‘discoveries’ for learner autonomy and the development of autonomous language learning.