Data-driven learning

Data-driven learning (DDL) is an approach to foreign language learning. Whereas most language learning is guided by teachers and textbooks, data-driven learning treats language as data and students as researchers undertaking guided discovery activities. Underpinning this pedagogical approach is the data - information - knowledge paradigm (see DIKW pyramid). It is informed by a pattern-based approach to grammar and vocabulary, and a lexicogrammatical approach to language in general. Thus the basic task in DDL is to identify patterns at all levels of language. From their findings, foreign language students can see how an aspect of language is typically used, which in turn informs how they can use it in their own speaking and writing.

In DDL, students use the same types of tools that professional linguists use, namely a corpus of texts that have been sampled and stored electronically, and a concordancer, which is a search engine designed for linguistic analysis. Some tools have been specifically created for data-driven learning, namely SkELL and Micro-concord.

Micro-concord was the first significant software designed for classroom use. It was developed for the Sinclair Spectrum by Tim Johns and Mike Scott and finally published for DOS computers in 1993 by OUP. 

Tim Johns who pioneered data-driven learning and coined the term. It first appeared in an article, Should you be persuaded: Two examples of data-driven learning (1991)

Johns was working in the foreign languages section at Birmingham University during the period when John Sinclair was working on the COBUILD project, which delivered the first major corpus-based dictionaries and grammars of English for foreign students. COBUILD however, never tasked students with exploring language data themselves.

Johns' referred to his specific DDL approach as kibitzing: when he returned his students' written work, together they would explore the errors using corpus data. A selection of these Kibbitzer tutorials are accessible on Mike Scott’s website.

Despite the widespread awareness of corpora among the major movers and shakers in foreign language teaching, DDL is not widely embraced by its practitioners. One of the main reasons for this is the incompatibility of views on language and language learning: traditional language teachers and textbooks treat language as a system of rules rather than patterns, and guided discovery leads to fuzzy results.

There is a considerable body of research conducted into DDL as evidenced by the professional bodies, journal articles and conference presentations. TaLC (Teaching and Language Corpora) is a biennial conference that is a platform for corpus-based research that has a pedagogical focus. CorpusCALL is a special interest group within EuroCALL and is mostly active through its Facebook group. The online teaching journal, Humanising Language Teaching hosts a section called Corpus Ideas.

While the approach has been the subject of a , it has—as of 2010—