The impact of motivational didactic interventions on
the writing process and its output: the case of
descriptive texts
El impacto de intervenciones didácticas motivacionales
en el proceso y el producto de redacción: el caso de los
textos descriptivos
Kris Buyse
KU Leuven & Nebrija University
kris.buyse@kuleuven.be
ABSTRACT
In this article we describe the impact of motivational didactic interventions
on the process and the output of writing descriptive texts in Spanish as a
Foreign Language by Dutch speaking students of the 3rd Bachelor year of
the Applied Linguistics curriculum at the Flemish KU Leuven university.
The texts were stored and analysed in the Aprescrilov learner corpus
application. The didactic intervention was tested in a pretest – test –
posttest setting, both with consecutive and with simultaneous groups: the
results of the year 2006-2007 (without intervention) were compared with
the ones of 2007-2008 (with intervention), as well as the results of two
groups in 2011-2012 (experimental versus control group). The results of
quantitative and qualitative tests show an important impact on both
process (motivation, enjoyment and perceived improvement) and output
(lexical richness and dynamic style) of the writing of the descriptive texts.
Keywords: error analysis, interlanguage, learner corpora, task based language
learning, motivation
RESUMEN
En este artículo se describe el impacto de unas intervenciones didácticas
motivacionales en el proceso y el output de la escritura de textos
Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas (RNAEL) ISSN 1699-6569
Vol. 12 Núm. 25 (2018) doi: 10.26378/rnlael225295
Recibido: 24/09/2018 / Aprobado: 10/11/2018
Publicado bajo licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento Sin Obra Derivada 4.0 Internacional
descriptivos en español como lengua extranjera por estudiantes
neerlandófonos del 3er año de Grado de la formación de Lingüística
Aplicada en la universidad flamenca KU Leuven. Los textos se almacenaron
y analizaron en la aplicación del corpus de aprendices Aprescrilov. La
intervención didáctica fue puesta a prueba con un diseño pretest – test-
postest, con grupos tanto consecutivos como simultáneos: los resultados
del año 2006-2007 (sin intervención) fueron comparados con los del año
2007-2008 (con intervención), así como los resultados de dos grupos en
2011-2012 (grupos experimental y de control). Los resultados de las
pruebas cuantitativas y cualitativas muestran un impacto significativo en
el proceso (motivación, goce y percepción de mejora) y output (riqueza
léxica y estilo dinámico) de la escritura de los textos descriptivos.
Palabras clave: análisis de errores, interlengua, corpus de aprendices,
aprendizaje de lenguas basado en tareas, motivación
1. INTRODUCTION
The 3rd Bachelor curriculum at the department of Applied
Linguistics of the Flemish University of KU Leuven aims at teaching
students to produce in the foreign language –in this case Spanish-
qualitative texts in the major text genres at a general language level
of B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages. Since our learner corpus Aprescrilov (see section 3 for
more details) stores all texts of students of Spanish as a Foreign
Language (SFL) and tags them a.o. by genre and error category, it
enables us to discover certain tendencies in the output of the
learners. In this way the error analysis of the descriptive texts
produced between 2003 and 2006 learnt us that one of the most
frequent problems in those texts is what we call ‘lexical poverty’:
(over)use of the verbs ser, estar, hay (all hyper frequent verbs
meaning ‘to be’) and tener (‘to have’) – instead of a variety of
semantically ‘richer’ variants-, while this error category never
enters the top 10 of the most frequent problems in other text
genres. A second problem that emerges from the analysis of these
texts is their monotone, static character, which is obviously a
consequence of the static “to be” and “to have” verbs, but also of
the general point of view chosen by the authors, i.e. static instead
of dynamic. Thirdly, in the writing portfolios that learners are asked
to hand in after each writing assignment, students showed low
motivation when writing the descriptive texts, with an average score
of 2.3 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Therefore we adopted for the 2006-2007 edition of the course
a TBLT approach, with a strong emphasis on real-life, meaning-
making tasks, as well as focus on creativity, learner autonomy,
motivation and team work, with pre and post tasks. In the pretasks,
focus was set on lexical richness and dynamic style. As students
with a task based motivation are expected to consider tasks as
challenging and valuable learning experiences, and therefore
perform them in a more structured and thorough way
(Vandekerckhove, Vandergraesen and Cruysweegs, 2009), we
expected this approach to entail a more motivating, meaningful and
empowering writing process as well as a better output.
In the following sections we will go into the details of the study.
In Section 2 we will provide a brief overview of the general
theoretical framework and the key notions used in this study.
Section 3 will outline the architecture of the Aprescrilov corpus,
Section 4 the methodology and Section 5 the results of the present
study.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The Aprescrilov corpus and Aprescrilov-based case-studies
performed to date can be located at the interface of five
frameworks, viz. Error Analysis, Interlanguage studies, (Learner)
Corpus Research, Task Based Language Learning and Teaching, and
Studies on Motivation and Learning. In what follows, we will present
succinctly these frameworks.
2.1 Error Analysis
Error Analysis (EA) has become relevant thanks to the work of
Corder (Corder, 1981). It is, essentially, a scientific procedure
whose objective is to determine the nature, cause and
consequences of errors made by non-native language learners when
learning/acquiring a foreign language.
Additionally, the final objective of EA is to draw conclusions
from the identification, description and explanation of errors, with
the aim of proposing didactic procedures designed to help avoid
those errors in the interlanguage (IL) of non-native speakers (see
Section 2.2). IL and EA are thus closely related.
Interestingly, in view of severe criticism of EA for paying too
much and exclusive attention to learner’s errors and deficiencies
instead of also analyzing learners’ strengths, EA has shifted focus
“from mere error analysis to the analysis of performance in its
entirety” (Callies et al., 2015: 166). Although errors are obviously
more likely to draw analysts’ attention, we also keep track of
learners’ successful uses of a particular linguistic item in our
Aprescrilov-based case-studies.
2.2 Interlanguage
The Interlanguage framework (IL) was proposed by Selinker
(Selinker, 1972). He hypothesized that in addition to the mother
tongue and the learner’s foreign language, there is a separate
(idiosyncratic) linguistic system in learning processes, viz. the
interlanguage. This system is based on observable output which
results from a learner’s attempted production of a Target Language
(TL) norm. Selinker called this linguistic system “interlanguage”.
IL has also come to be associated with another scholar, viz.
Granger, in particular since her seminal paper on Contrastive
Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996). Granger proposes
contrastive IL as the best methodological approach to Learner
Corpora. This method compares the target language or L2 with the
learner’s native language or L1. Preferably, it also includes a
comparison between distinct types of learners, with regard to their
proficiency level and mother tongue.
2.3 Learner Corpus Research
Research in Learner Corpus Research (LC(R), see a.o. Granger,
2009) has only recently been recognized as a worthy field or
subdomain within Corpus Linguistics2. Learner Corpora are
generally defined as “systematic collections of authentic, continuous
and contextualized language use (spoken or written) by L2 learners,
stored in electronic format” (Callies and Paquot, 2015: 1). Although
the framework initially mainly focused on English, LC of many
languages are currently freely available3.
As is the case of corpora of native speaker productions, corpora
diverge largely (among others as to size, text genres, year, etc.),
usually in function of the corpus designer’s research interest.
The introduction of corpus linguistics into language teaching
makes it possible for the results of EA and IL studies not to be
merely intuitive, descriptive and structuralist, but objectively based
on solid data, in this case data from a LC. However, Hasko (2013:
4-5), among others, criticizes the lack of progress in establishing
strong, bidirectional links between LC and Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT), due to (i)
a shortage of longitudinal studies that would allow scholars to
establish causality in interpreting corpus data analyses, and even
better, test the efficiency of pedagogical adjustments and (ii) the
fact that it is more typical of LC analysis to describe learner
language rather than attempt to explain it. The Aprescrilov project
intends to move a step forward in applying LCR to FLT (Cruz Piñol,
2012). Although it has been primarily designed to improve the
didactic material and habits in SFL-teaching in Belgium, it allows to
analyze the possible interference of more than one language (L1,
but also other L2) in foreign language learning (Buyse, Delbecque
and Speelman, 2009).
While both EA and IL originated in the 1960-1970s, LCR
emerged at the turn of the 1990s (Callies and Paquot, 2015: 1). EA
and IL initially included useful studies on several languages, but
from the 90s onwards they were used predominantly in the field of
English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL). Their use for SFL
remained limited. LCR researchers were also primarily concerned
with EFL at the outset, but rapidly infected SLA researchers of many
languages with their enthusiasm. In the light of promising benefits
of LC for language learning and teaching, the field is increasingly
gaining in interest, but is still considered to be ‘on the move’ or
‘under construction’ (Callies and Paquot, 2015; Callies et al., 2015).
Hence, with respect to English L2 learner corpus research, Spanish
L2 learner corpus research is gradually bridging the gap.
2.4 Task Based Language Learning
Task Based Language Learning and Teaching (TBLT) is an
approach in which learning revolves around the completion of
meaningful tasks. In the TBL approach (Ellis, 2003), the main focus
is the authentic use of language for genuine communication. Tasks
can be real-life situations or have a pedagogical purpose. They
should provide opportunities for students to exchange information
with a focus on meaning, and have a clear purpose: learners should
know the outcome they are expected to produce when they finish
performing the task. The outcome may vary, and usually results in
an outcome that can be shared with more people.
2.5 Affectivity in Language Learning and Teaching
Affect in learning and teaching is nowadays seen as more
effective than a purely cognitive teaching approach (Arnold, 2011;
Dewaele, 2005, 2015). As Stevick (1980) states: “Success [in
language learning] depends less on materials, techniques and
linguistic analyses and more on what goes on inside and between
the people in the classroom” (p. 4). The “inside” refers to individual
learner factors such as self-concept, anxiety, learner styles, but also
to teachers’ own personal development. The “between” is about
the relational aspects which develop between the participants in the
classroom – between students or between teacher and students -
or possibly between learners and the target language and culture
(Dewaele and MacIntyre, 2014). Positive affect can provide
invaluable support for learning just as negative affect can close
down the mind and prevent learning from occurring altogether
(MacIntyre, Gregersen and Mercer, 2016).
This explains the growing interest of the intertwining of emotion
and cognition both within an institutional context and in extra-
institutional contexts where multiple languages and cultures meet
(Berdal-Masuy and Pairon, 2015; Dewaele, 2018).
In this study we investigated the possible influences of didactic
interventions both on the skills and on the emotions of students
when writing (descriptive) texts in SFL, more particularly on
perceived L2 improvement and enjoyment (Nakamura, 2018).
3. THE CORPUS
The architecture of Aprescrilov – which stands for Aprender a
Escribir en Lovaina ‘Learning to write in Leuven’ (see Buyse, 2011)
– is based on the models proposed by Díaz-Negrillo and Fernández
Domínguez (2006), Granger (1996) and others. It is an online
corpus with restricted access for researchers4. It allows (i) to
perform quasi-longitudinal studies of writings by SFL-students, (ii)
to objectively determine the interference of more than one
language, (iii) to take into account both task and learner variability
(cf. Granger 2015; Tracy-Ventura & Myles, 2015), and, eventually,
(iv) to successfully implement conclusions from studies based on LC
in the development of new didactic material (cf. Fernández Pereda,
Buyse and Verveckken, 2014).
Aprescrilov consists of two subcorpora. The first, Aprescrilov I,
is composed of 2700 texts written in the academic years 2004-2010
by students of Spanish Linguistics and Literature at the Faculty of
Arts of the KU Leuven and of Applied Linguistics at the Lessius
Hogeschool (now “KU Leuven @ Antwerp”). The compositions were
written by 1st, 2nd and 3rd year Bachelor students of these two
institutions and have been digitally marked with the same
customized version of the Markin program (see a.o. Buyse and
González, 2013). This “button set” allows systematic marking of
problems or ‘errors’ in the texts, as well as of positive aspects. The
annotations cover all components of writing – from spelling to
discourse structure, punctuation, morphology, morphosyntax,
pragmatics, lexicon, etc.5 The online corpus also includes a
qualitative and quantitative description of each component: number
of compositions; number of words per text; distribution of text
types: descriptive, argumentative, expository and narrative texts,
as well as letters. It also contains a search interface which allows
us to search (anonymized) examples and their contexts using
criteria such as type of problem (or positive aspect), course,
academic year or institution (see Figure 1). The corpus contains
both assignments and tests.
Figure 1. Search interface of the Aprescrilov corpus.
The operating extension of the corpus results in an ongoing
creation of the second (sub)corpus, Aprescrilov II, composed of
Spanish texts from Dutch-speaking students of the same
institutions, Spanish texts from Dutch students of the Radboud
Universiteit (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and from French-speaking
Walloon students of the UCL (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) written in
the same period (viz. the academic year 2013-2014) and on
comparable subjects. These texts are gathered in an online corpus
with the same interface as Aprescrilov I. The corpus is currently
being expanded both with new versions of the same (writing) tasks
in the following academic years with new students, and with writing
tasks of students in higher years.
Texts were annotated with our customized version of Markin
(see Section 3) by annotators who had been trained in order to
obtain a systematic treatment of the same errors (inter-rater
reliability test for Kappa = 0.85 with p < 0.001). The Aprescrilov
corpus allows to perform queries per level, per year and per
assignment, and the integrated information on words per text
enables us to convert the absolute figures into relative ones.
With regard to the aforementioned shortcomings of LC studies
(see 2.3), it is worth mentioning that Aprescrilov varies as to task,
learner and other aspects:
(1) Task: genre, assignments vs test.
(2) Learner: it includes texts written both by beginners and by
advanced learners (viz. successful learners in higher years, allowing
pseudo-longitudinal research). Since 2013, metadata on the
authors have been available, more precisely on their native
language(s), the (amount of) contact with the Spanish language
and their proficiency level of other foreign languages. Overall, the
corpus contains texts of three main groups of students: (1) Dutch-
speaking students in Flanders (Dutch as L1, French as L2); (2)
Dutch-speaking students in the Netherlands (Dutch as L1, English
as L2); (3) French-speaking Walloon students (French as L1, Dutch
as L2).6
(3) Other variables: course, academic year, institution.
4. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
As already mentioned in the introduction, the analysis of the
descriptive texts of Aprescrilov of the period between 2003 and
2006 and the portfolios of the authors of the texts, revealed three
main problems:
(1) “lexical poverty”, viz. the (over)use of the verbs ser, estar,
hay and tener, and a lack of semantically ‘richer’ variants
(2) its monotone, static character, as result of the static “to be”
and “to have” verbs, but also of the general point of view chosen by
the author, i.e. static instead of dynamic.
(3) low student motivation when writing the descriptive texts,
with an average score of 2.3 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Problems two and three are all the more striking, since one year
earlier the authors of these texts, during the writing course of the
2nd bachelor year, had received a two hours class on “lexical
poverty” and been trained to avoid it with exercises on sentence
and paragraph level (although not on text level), such as the
following two (underlining is ours):
(1) Rewrite:
Me gustó mucho el pueblo; pero lo que más me gustó del pueblo
fue la plaza porticada. Sin embargo, a mis padres les gustó más la torre
de la iglesia del pueblo. (“I liked the village a lot; but what I liked most
about the village was its arcaded square. Nevertheless, my parents liked
more the tower of the church of the village”).
(2) Find an alternative for the following verbs:
¿Por qué están los coches en las aceras? (“Why are the cars on the
sidewalks?”)
En esa tumba hay el cadáver de un español ilustre. (“In this grave there
is a famous Spaniard”)
Esa ley tiene 40 artículos muy extensos. (“That law has 40 very extensive
articles”)
(…)
Despite of this training, one year later, the same students (now
in the 3rd Bachelor), when writing descriptive texts, seem to have
forgotten the knowledge and skills they had been training on
sentence and paragraph level, as can be deduced from the following
example, with 18 instances of the “poor” verbs ser, estar, hay and
tener on a total of 310 words (italics and underlining are ours):
La casa de mis sueños
Aunque todavía vivo con mis padres, de vez en cuando ya pienso
en mi propia casa. Me gusta leer los folletos publicitarios y los catálogos
con muebles modernos, pinturas nuevas, aparatos electrodomésticos... En
resumidas cuentas, me hace gracia imaginarme cómo será mi casa futura.
En realidad, mi sueño es vivir en la casa –o mejor dicho la hacienda– de
mis padres que tiene un patio, un establo, una casa espaciosa y un jardín
grande. Después de 18 años aún no está renovada totalmente. Además,
quiero modificar y sobre todo modernizar mucho. Prefiero tener un interior
moderno y acogedor que incluso sea fácil para limpiar.
Creo que la cocina y la sala de estar son los cuartos más
importantes puesto que se está mucho tiempo allí. Me gusta cocinar, de
modo que una cocina grande y sobre todo práctica es imprescindible. Voy
a pintar la sala de estar de colores cálidos, pero no demasiados oscuros.
Además, una chimenea y un parquet oscuro en el rincón para sentarse
tienen que aportar al ambiente acogedor.
Los otros cuartos de la planta baja son un estudio donde quiero
colocar estantes llenos de libros, un cuarto de los niños, un cuarto con la
lavadora y la secadora, y claro, un servicio. También voy a comprar una
sauna, ya que es bastante sano y no me gusta el frío.
En el piso de arriba hay 4 habitaciones y un pequeño cuarto de
baño. Me gustaría tener un cuarto de baño mayor con baño, dos lavabos
y una ducha grande. Voy a tener 2 dormitorios para los niños y uno para
los huéspedes. En mi propio dormitorio quiero otro cuarto de baño y un
guardarropa muy grande.
No voy a tener tiempo para cuidar del jardín ni de un huerto, sin
embargo, quiero tener un jardín con un césped y muchas flores que
florecen en diferentes estaciones.
In conclusion, students do not link their knowledge on “lexical
poverty” to the genre of descriptive texts.
Therefore we redesigned the introductory class on this genre,
including guidelines on how to write this type of descriptive texts.
The introduction “new style” contains a comparison between a
descriptive text of a Spanish writer and an (anonymized) one by a
former student.
A first pre-task consists in listing and counting the instances of
the four aforementioned ‘poor’ verbs in both texts, as well as the
lexical and grammatical alternatives used by each author in order
to enhance the variation in the students’ productions. Together with
the teacher they draw the following conclusions:
• Text of professional writer: Ser 6, Estar 5, Hay 4, Tener 3 (Total =
18/500, or 3.4%, versus 6% in student text)
• Lexical alternatives:
o for Estar > pasar muchas horas (“to spend a lot of hours”), disfrutar
de (“enjoy”), vivir en (“to live in”), quedarse (“to stay”), cocinar [vs
estar en la cocina] (“to cook” [vs “to be in the kitchen”]), jugar (“to
play”)…
o for estar/hay > nos encontramos con (“we find”), irradiar
(“irradiate”), caer (“to fall”), saltar a la vista (“to hit in the eye”),
llegar a (“to arrive at”), entrar en (“to enter”)…
o …
• Syntactic alternatives:
o Postponed adjective / participle: rodeado de (“surrounded by”)
o Relative clause: [está claro >] lo que salta a la vista ([“it is obvious
that”] > “what hits in the eyes is”)
o Pronominal verbs: [está dividido en] > se divide en ([“it is divided
into”] > *”it divides itself in”)
o Verbal periphrases: se puede / podemos + inf. (“one can…” / “we
can…”)
A second pre-task requires the student to rewrite a (poor)
descriptive text, aiming at more variation and dynamics, using
techniques such as “travelling”, where the author moves the angle
like a moving camera does in movies. In that exercise he discovers
formulas such as the following:
o Dynamics: bienvenida (“welcome”), como puedes ver (“as you can
see”), empecemos con (“let us start with”) ...
In order to measure the effect of that didactic intervention, we
designed the following experiments.
1. 2006-2007 (N = 21): pretest – test – post test without control
groups, texts of ±300 words; this experiment was repeated in
2007-2008 (N = 20)
a. “pretest” (assignment): descriptive text without new
instructions
b. didactic intervention: new introduction (cf. supra)
c. “Test” (assignment)
d. “Post test” (test, 2 months later)
2. 2011-2012: pretest – test – post test with control group,
students being randomly assigned to experimental vs control group
(N = 10 vs 11)
a. “pretest” (assignment): descriptive text without new
instructions
b. didactic intervention: new introduction, only for experimental
group
c. “Test” (assignment)
d. “Posttest” (test, 2 months later)
All activities were assessed by 2 independent raters.
Despite of the very homogeneous character of the population,
the students were asked to deliver the following metadata: gender,
age, nationality, mother tongue, ±bilingual, education, earlier
Spanish courses, earlier Spanish immersion period(s), other
languages.
Participants were also asked to answer a short list of questions
in a portfolio. Besides procedural items such as “did you look at the
model of the text genre before starting to write?”, “did you
brainstorm on the topic beforehand?”, “did you work out a structure
for the text before starting to write?”, students were asked to score
their motivation, their enjoyment and their perceived improvement
when writing the descriptive text on a scale from 1 (not motivating
/ enjoying / improving at all) to 5 (extremely motivating / enjoying
/ improving).
Our research hypotheses were the following.
(RH1) The didactic intervention will have a positive and significant
effect on lexico-grammatical richness and on the dynamic and
creative character of the descriptive text. Hence, the variables
“lexico-grammatical richness” and “dynamic expression” will
increase, as well as the general score for the test. The variables
“lexical poverty” and “static expression” will decrease.
(RH2) The level of lexico-grammatical richness and textual
dynamics will drop significantly in the post test (due to time lapse
and different conditions of the activity).
(RH3) The student will be more motivated when writing texts of this
text genre.
5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table I shows the results of the first experiment (with
consecutive groups). They seem to confirm RH1: the general scores
for the years 06-07 and 07-08, respectively, improve with 14,5 to
20% between pretest and test, and accordingly for lexico-
grammatical richness and dynamic expression (increase of
occurrences with 94 till 115%), on the one hand, and lexical poverty
and static expression (decline of 38 till 125%), on the other. A
series of paired samples t-tests revealed that the differences
between pretest and test are significant: for 2006-2007 there was
a significant difference in the scores for pretest (M=11.3, SD=1.62)
and test (M=14.2, SD=1.17) conditions; t(20)=-16.02, p = 0.000;
for 2007-2008 there was a significant difference in the scores for
pretest (M=11.0, SD=1.21) and test (M=15.0, SD=1.39)
conditions; t(19)=-17.69, p = 0.000.
RH2, on its turn, does not seem to be confirmed, as there is
only a minor decrease of the general score when comparing test
and posttest: for 2006-2007 there was no significant difference in
the scores for test (M=14.2, SD=1.17) and posttest (M=14.1,
SD=1.18) conditions; t(20)=1.45, p = 0.162; for 2007-2008, there
was no significant difference neither in the scores for test (M=15.0,
SD=1.39) and posttest (M=14.5, SD=1.76) conditions; t(19)=-
16.02, p = 0.016.
The same holds for the more specific parameters (lexical
poverty, lexico-grammatical richness, static expression and
dynamic expression): the differences between pretest and test are
significant (p<0.01), the ones between test ant posttest are not
(p>0.01).
A Spearman rank correlation analysis revealed no highly
significant influences of the variables listed in the metadata
document: criteria such as gender, age, nationality, mother tongue,
other languages, type of education showed no correlation with the
results (r=< .10); even criteria with stronger possible influences
such as ±bilingual upbringing, earlier Spanish courses and earlier
Spanish immersion period(s) showed only small possible influences
(r=.10 - .29).
General
score
/20 points
Lexical
poverty
/300 words
Lexico-
grammatical
richness
/300 words
Static
expression
/300 words
Dynamic
expression
/300 words
0607
0708
0607
0708
0607
0708
0607
0708
0607
0708
Pre t
11.3
11.0
10.3
12.7
2.8
5.4
35.3
33.8
2.6
4.3
Test
14.2
15.0
2.6
3.2
23.1
24.3
10.7
8.7
25.3
27.3
Post t
14.1
14.5
3.6
3.4
20.3
24.1
12.2
8.9
23.7
26.8
Table I. Results of quantitative analysis. Average scores of 2006-2007 and
2007-2008
The analysis of the portfolios confirms RH3: the writing of the
descriptive texts is now scored as highly motivating (averages of 4
and 4.2 on a scale of 5 vs the average of 2.3 in the portfolios of
earlier years before the didactic intervention), highly enjoyable
(averages of 4.1 and 4.0, vs 2,4 before) and with a highly positive
effect on the perceived improvement (averages of 4.1 and 4.3, vs
2,6 before).
Table II shows the results of the second experiment (with
experimental and control group). Also in this experiment the
general scores improve between pretest and test, with 30% for the
EG and 11.5% for the CG, and accordingly for lexico-grammatical
richness and dynamic expression (increase of occurrences with 115
till 116% for EG vs 6 to 21% for CG), on the one hand, and lexical
poverty and static expression (decline of 45 till 127% for EG vs 3.5
to 8.5 for CG), on the other. A series of paired samples t-tests
revealed that the differences between pretest and test are
significant in both groups: for EG there was a significant difference
in the scores for pretest (M=10.5, SD=0.97) and test (M=16.5,
SD=1.50) conditions; t(9)=-23.24, p = 0.000; for CG there was
also a significant difference in the scores for pretest (M=11.2,
SD=1.33) and test (M=13.5, SD=0.93) conditions; t(10)=-11.66,
p = 0.000.
In this case, RH1 is confirmed by a series of independent
samples t-tests, which revealed that, on the one hand, the results
at the pretests of both groups are comparable: there was no
significant difference in the scores of the EG (M=10.5, SD=0.97)
and CG (M=11.2, SD=1.33) conditions; t(19)=-1.33, p = 0.199;
and, on the other hand, the differences between the results of both
groups at the tests and post tests were significant: for the test, EG
(M=16.5, SD=1.50) and CG (M=13.5, SD=0.93) conditions;
t(19)=5.62, p = 0.000; for the post test, EG (M=16.2, SD=1.16)
and CG (M=13.2, SD=0.60) conditions; t(19)=7.71, p = 0.000. The
same holds for the differences between the values of EG and CG of
the more specific parameters (p<0.01).
RH2, on its turn, does not seem to be confirmed here neither:
we only note a minor decrease of the general score when comparing
test and posttest (-1.5%, both for EG and CG). For EG there was no
significant difference in the scores for test (M=16.5, SD=1.51) and
posttest (M=16.2, SD=1.14) conditions; t(9)=-1.96, p = 0.081; for
CG, there was no significant difference neither in the scores for test
(M=13.5, SD=0.93) and posttest (M=13.2, SD=0.60) conditions;
t(10)=-1.40, p = 0.192.
The same holds for the more specific parameters: the
differences between pretest and test are significant (p<0.01), the
ones between test ant posttest are not (p>0.01).
Again, a Spearman rank correlation analysis revealed no highly
significant influences of the variables listed in the metadata
document, neither for criteria such as gender, age, nationality,
mother tongue, other languages, type of education (r=< .10), nor
for criteria such as ±bilingual upbringing, earlier Spanish courses
and earlier Spanish immersion period(s) (r=.10 - .29).
General
score
/20
Lexical
poverty
/300
Lexico-
grammatical
richness
/300
Static
expression
/300
Dynamic
expression
/300
Pre
test
EG
10.5
11.2
2.3
35.6
2.6
CG
11.2
12.3
2.5
32.3
3.2
Test
EG
16.5
2.2
25.6
10.2
25.6
CG
13.5
11.6
6.7
30.6
4.4
Post
test
EG
16.2
3.3
23.2
12.6
23.4
CG
13.2
12.6
5.6
32.3
3.4
Table II. Results of quantitative analysis: experimental group (EG) vs
control group (CG). Average scores of 2011-2012.
The analysis of the portfolios confirms also RH3: the writing of
the descriptive texts is scored as highly motivating by the students
of the EG (average of 4.4 on a scale of 5, vs an average of 2.4 in
the portfolios of the control group), enjoyable (EG: average of 4, vs
2,3 for CG) and with a highly positive effect on the perceived
improvement (EG: average of 4.1, vs 2,8 for CG).
By way of illustration we copy here an example of a text
(posttest) produced by a student of the EG (3 “poor verbs” vs 27
“rich expressions” on a total of 283 words):
Se vende burbuja financiera: la Residencia de los Reyes Magos
Entrando por la puerta inmediatamente notamos que los
Reyes Magos han incorporado su origen en la decoración de la
casa. Pasamos por estatuas griegas igual que budistas y
vudúes. Acudiendo a la cocina ya olemos las especias que
provienen de tres continentes diferentes. En la cocina vemos
grandes hornos que los Reyes utilizaban para cocer artículos
de confitería. Colgados por todas partes hay crucifijos que nos
recuerdan el origen de este día tan especial para los españoles.
Las otras habitaciones a nivel del suelo se utilizaban para
producir los regalos. Máquinas de empaquetar aparecen al
lado de mesas de diseño.
Subiendo a la primera planta por una escalera ancha
encontramos las habitaciones de los reyes y sus pajes. En un
rincón oscuro se esconde una escalera muy estrecha que nos
permite el acceso al desván. Allí arriba, nos damos cuenta de
que había un museo. Colgadas en la pared vemos múltiples
imágenes relatándonos el origen de los Reyes. Para bajar
utilizamos el medio más rápido siendo un tobogán espiral que
da al jardín.
Situado en un monte, el jardín nos presta una vista
espectacular sobre Andalucía. Descendiendo del monte
buscamos la entrada al túmulo donde apilaban todas las cartas
recibidas de los niños. A los nuevos propietarios les costará
vaciar el sitio. Seguimos descendiendo hasta el pie del monte
donde se encuentran los establos de los camellos. Abriendo la
verja para pasar a los establos, en un santiamén, estamos
rodeados por ovejas, cabras y gallinas. Nos estorban el paso
manifestando claramente que están hambrientas. Empujando
los animales a un lado nos dirigimos hacia la zona segura,
fuera de la verja. Un telesquí nos lleva a la cumbre del monte
donde termina nuestra visita.
Since this didactic intervention is now systematically applied
when the text genre of descriptive texts is introduced, the category
of ‘lexical poverty’ has left the top 5 of most frequent problems in
general, and in descriptive texts in particular.
On the other hand, the Aprescrilov corpus has certain
limitations and could benefit from a number of extensions that are
currently missing due to lack of funding: lemmatization and POS-
tagging would open a whole range of new research perspectives;
tagging of all contexts without a certain error, i.e. which may have
a learning potential for a specific problem (in Aprescrilov, for
legibility reasons this is only done for a few studies, as Markin does
not allow multi-layer annotation and the annotated versions are first
sent to the students).
6. CONCLUSIONS
This study offers insights into the essential role of learner
corpora such as Aprescrilov in the evolution of errors by students
and student groups, and shows how powerful some methodological
and didactic changes can prove to be, both for the writing process
(motivation, enjoyment, perception of improvement) and for the
output (richness of the writing product).
However, the study is limited to the writing of one text genre
by students of one type of department in a Flemish university, with
a very homogeneous population regarding age, education, mother
tongue, etc. More studies into other languages at other departments
in other countries should be carried out in order to be able to
extrapolate to other populations.
NOTES
1 Some results of a pilot of this study were previously published in Buyse,
Fernández Pereda and Verveckken (2016).
2 The emergence is situated at “the turn of the 1990s” (Callies and Paquot 2015:
1) but the field has developed rapidly. It now has a proper international academic
association (the Learner Corpus Association) holding an international conference
every two years. A proper handbook has been published by Granger and
colleagues. Since April 2015, it also has its own international scientific journal
(International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, John Benjamins) (cf. Callies
and Paquot, 2015: 1-3; Callies et alii, 2015: 160-161).
3 Cf. the LC listed in the online overview by Granger et al.:
http://www.uclouvain.be/en-cecl-lcworld.html.
4 Aprescrilov is available at http://ilt.kuleuven.be/aprescrilov under the
acceptance of the terms and conditions stated in the introduction. The interface
and search buttons are both in Dutch (the language of the institution, KU Leuven,
Belgium) and in Spanish.
5 Markin, elaborated by Creative Technology, allows noting down compositions
digitally. “It is a Windows program which runs on the teacher's computer. It can
import a student's text for marking by pasting from the clipboard, or directly from
an RTF or text file. Once the text has been imported, Markin provides all the tools
a teacher needs to mark and annotate the text. When marking is complete, the
teacher can export the marked text as an RTF file for loading into a word-processor,
or as a web page so that students can view the marked text in a web browser.
Marked work can even be emailed directly back to the student, all from within the
Markin program.” (https://www.cict.co.uk/markin/index.php)
6 The corpus takes advantage of the institutional differences between Belgium and
the Netherlands in foreign language teaching at primary/secondary education
level. The Aprescrilov corpus includes three groups of SFL-learners, characterized
by two distinct mother tongues (Dutch vs. French) and distinct L2s (French –
English – Dutch), and in doing so, allows to determine not only the inference of L1
on the IL of SFL-learners but also the interference of L2. The underlying hypothesis
is that differences in performances may be found between the three learner groups
and that some differences may be due to the a distinct degree of interference from
French, according to the following cline: French-speaking students will probably
make more errors reflecting the influence of French than Dutch students, while
Flemish students will be situated at the center of the scale, between French-
speaking and Dutch students, due to the different status of French as a FL in
Flanders and the Netherlands.
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