Reflection on 'Can learners use concordance feedback for writing errors?

The article ‘Can Learners use concordance feedback for writing errors? introduces a research that focused on discovering whether learners could enjoy and use networked concordancing as a learning tool. The participants were lower intermediate level 20 adult Chinese EFL learners. The participants had to submit 10 assignments over a 15-week semester. When each participant submitted his/her assignment, the instructors gave feedback through concordance links for five typical errors. Then, the students had to revise the assignment for the final submission and need to submit a form explaining what corrections they have made based on the understanding developed from concordance –feedback.

Evidence collected from the error analysis forms show that when pre-cast links were provided on the texts most of the students completed the concordance searches and submitted completed error analysis forms, but without the links less than half students submitted error analysis forms. Though the research has borne out the intended results, there are several gaps left. Firstly, the four-week time-period was insufficient. If the similar research is repeated in the future, it must be expanded over longer period of time. Since the research was not experimental , there was absence of a control group. If there had been a control group, more reliable and authentic results could have been achieved.

Indeed this research proved meaningful to the participants, who were adults, but I wonder if concordancing softwares are useful/applicable to primary school students. Since I teach in a primary school, I am interested in knowing if such kinds of resources pose any linguistic challenge to my students. The default linguistic explanation offered through concordancing might be beyond my students’ linguistic repertoire, therefore it might be off-putting.