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A Systematic Review of Using Discipline-Specific Corpora for Lexico-Grammatical Pattern Learning: A Case Study for Computer Science Postgraduates

This article reports on a language learning system and a program designed to help students with academic vocabulary in the New Zealand university computer science department. The system is a learner-friendly corpus-based tool that allows students to look up lexico-grammatical patterns of a given word in academic writing. The program, based on a data-driven learning approach, comprises tutorials, workshops, and follow-up exercises that help students learn useful formulaic patterns of academic words that are typical in computer science. The authors' results capture students' awareness of language patterns in academic text and their growing confidence in using academic words with the assistance of the tool. Not surprisingly, interpreting and transferring the corpus data into students' own writing requires training and practice. The effectiveness and limitations of the resources and tools used in this learning program are examined, and suggestions are made for further improvement and future research.