Some consent with benefits; in contrast, others, nonetheless, cast a doubt on corpora implication.
Difficulties in learning with corpus were mentioned in Poole (2012), Huang (2007), Bunting (2013), Breyer (2009), Caliskan & Kuru Gonen (2018), Farr (2008), Lin & Yi (2015), McCarthy (2008), Zavera (2017), Frankenberg –Garcia (2021), (Jeaco, 2017; Wilson, Hertley, Sharoff and Stephenson, 2010, p.776), and Yunus
(2017). To be specific, obstacles are integration of corpora into curriculum, shortage of time, unfriendliness of the website interface, great effort required, dearth of accessibility, requirement of high-level student proficiency to fully benefit corpus activities. This was reminded of in Vyatkina (2016) as regards hard reading for low- level learners. This was also agreed in Poole (2012, p.690) that concordance lines overwhelmed students or rendered them inconclusive if the meaning was correct. In addition, other drawbacks include a shortage of students’ metalinguistic knowledge, preparation of an appropriate corpus, great effort of material compilation. The problem of lack of time for learning with corpus data was likely addressed by flipped classroom Khoshsima (2021).
Another barrier of learning corpus mentioned in Bunting (2013) and Healther
& Helt (2011) was that concordance lines (sentences) cut short in a corpus can hinder students’ understanding. This is because students find contexts of these sentences confusing.
Aside from what were discussed, training is a throny issue in applying DDL.
For instance, Crosthwaite (2019) found that even teachers were hesitate to apply corpus in classrooms because there was lack of training. This means training plays an important role in applying corpora. As another way to illustrate, Vannestal and Lindquist (2007,p.344) found that a confusion occurs to a number of students due to technical issues.
Moreover, deficiency of analysing skills of students were reported.
Furthermore, Huang (2016, p.7) pointed that selecting and gaining access to appropriate corpora, having technical issues with pedagogical materials, and pressure from time constraints are difficulties in corpus-based approach and DDL.
To discuss difficulties corpus-related research may face, Bunting (2013) mentioned challenges previous researchers had, and these can be seen as following.
Table 2:
Difficulties in corpus studies (Bunting, 2013)
Authors Problems
Bunting (2013, p.18-19)
-Corpus size causing issues of representativeness and usefulness in question.
-ineffectiveness of over-exposing students with authentic language.
Gabrielatos (2005, p.133)
teacher resistance against corpus because:
-poor communication from corpus researchers.
-lack of distinction between scientific importance and pedagogical feasibility.
-confusion to integrating corpus tools in existing pedagogy.
Hunston (2002)
-difficulties because extreme attitudes of corpus proponents (true believers)
-over-reliance on native speaker corpora on patterns -undue focue on frequency as primary identifier.
-time and energy from teachers.
Flowerdew (2009)
-truncated concordance lines from bottom-up processing are decontextualized.
-principled selection of a corpus.
-inductive approach is emphasized.
-less pedagogical opportunities for further discussion and expansion.
Romer (2008) More training needed
Staples (2011) Limited data showing its benefits in university classrooms Conrad (2007)
Two out of fifteen in-service and three out of 16 pre-service teachers used corpus. They concerned a lack of time, lack of confidence, relevance of corpus-based teaching methodologies to classes.
Heather and Helt (2011)
Complexity of working with tools Time needed to analyze data.
Cortes (2011) Around half of students (45%) interviewed concerned about “too many papers to analyze”, “too little time for analysis”.
Bunting (2013) Teacher invisibility: weak link between corpus data and classroom.
Lee and Swales (2006)
Lack of teachers to carry on
Cortes (2011) Difficult to convince (school) administrators and instructors about the new teaching methods.
Reppen (2010)
The ease of integrating is over-stated.
It is easier and less daunting for those already enthused about corpus tools than for those not.
Furthermore, limitations of DDL should be also considered when it comes to previous studies. First, Yunus (2017, p.145) agreed that authentic corpus sentences are examples that are difficult for lower proficient learners to follow. Second, Yunus (2017, p.145) mentioned other researchers’ opinions that authentic corpus sentences fail to convey meaningful sociolinguistic senses. Third, Yunus (2017, p.145) highlighted other researchers’ opinions that they casted doubt upon practicality and efficacy of DDL in which conducting DDL is pedagogically challenging. DDL seemed reliant on learning styles and motivation because it changes noticeably among different students. In addition, Yunus (2017) indicated some studies that believed that vast data of DDL can confuse learners or discourage ill-trained learners. What’s more, DDL can have negative effect on technophobic learners. Another limitation is that DDL is not Asian learners’ cups of tea because they get used to being knowledge recipients rather than explorers with hypothesis and formulation. In such countries, deductive approaches are prevalent. To conclude, DDL has many drawbacks. To the end, Yunus (2017, p.146) considered DDL as being “a perpetual challenge for teachers and learners”.