The Use of COCA to Promote Autonomous Learning among Thai EFL University Students in a Writing Course

Abstract

This study investigated whether the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) can promote Thai EFL public university students’ autonomous learning in a paragraph writing course. Thirty third-year students participated in this study, and they were from a public university in Bangkok, Thailand. They were asked to complete three writing assignments. Each assignment included the first draft and the final draft, and when they finished the first draft, they were required to use COCA to discover usage patterns and revise their work based on teacher feedback they received. The questionnaire was used to find out self-report data regarding the implementation of COCA on promoting students’ autonomous learning based on the process of autonomous learning by Knowles (1975). Additionally, the semi-structured interview was employed to investigate the students’ perceptions of COCA as a tool for promoting autonomous learning. The results from the questionnaire showed that COCA could be a material resource for learning writing. The semi-structured interview also revealed that the students’ perceptions of using COCA as a tool for promoting autonomous learning were positive because it can increase their confidence in their writing due to the use of authentic data. When they are confident of their writing skills, they are willing to continue practice writing through the use of COCA.